














THE 

DESERT FIDDLER 


Other Books by the Author 

Getting and Holding 

Tom Henry of Wahoo County 

Ways of Success; If a Man Fails 
Seven Times; and Other Stories 























' , 










c 

' • 







“He began to play ... the song of the rose that 
blossomed with fragrance in the night ” 





THE 

DESERT FIDDLER 

BY 

WILLIAM H. HAMBY 



FRONTISPIECE 

BY 

RALPH PALLEN COLEMAN 



GARDEN CITY, N. Y., AND TORONTO 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
1921 



r 










COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY 
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 


COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
IN THE UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN 


THE 

DESERT FIDDLER 




















THE DESERT FIDDLER 


CHAPTER I 

B OB ROGEEN slept in the east wing of the 
squat adobe house. About midnight there 
was a vigorous and persistent shaking of the 
screen door. 

“Yes?” he called, sleepily. 

“They have just telephoned in from the Red 
Butte Ranch” — it was Dayton, his employer, at the 
door — “the engine on that tractor has balked. They 
want a man out there by daylight to fix it.” 

Bob put up his arms and stretched, and replied 
yawningly : 

“Well, I guess I’m the fixer.” 

“I guess you are,” agreed the implement dealer. 
“You know the way, don’t you? Better ride the 
gray; and don’t forget to take your gun.” The boss 
crossed the patio to his own wing of the house. 

3 


4 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 

The young fellow sat up and kicked along under 
the edge of the bed, feeling for his shoes. 

“A love — lee time to go to work,” he growled, 
good-naturedly. “Here is where the early bird 
catches the tractor — and the devil.” 

When he came out of the door a few minutes later, 
buttoning his corduroy coat — even in Imperial 
Valley, which knows no winter, one needs a coat on a 
March night — Rogeen stood for a moment on the 
step and put up his long arms again to stretch some 
of the deep sleep from his muscles. He was not at 
all enthusiastic about odd jobs at midnight; but in a 
moment his eyes fell on the slanting moonlight that 
shone mistily on the chinaberry tree in the patio; the 
town on the American side was fast asleep; the wind 
with the smell of sagebrush stirred a clump of bam- 
boo. The desert night had him — and when he rode 
away toward the Mexican line he had forgotten his 
gun and taken his fiddle. 

He passed through Mexicali, the Mexican town, 
where the saloons were still open and the lights over 
the Red Owl, the great gambling hall, winked with 
glittering sleeplessness; and out upon the road by the 
irrigation canal, fringed with cottonwood and willows. 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


5 


He let the reins drop over the saddlehorn, and 
brought the fiddle round in front of him. There 
was no hurry, he would be there before daylight. 
And he laughed as he ran his right thumb over the 
strings : 

“What a combination — a fool, a fiddle, and a 
tractor.” 

Bob could not explain what impulse had made 
him bring a fiddle with him on the way to mend a 
balky gasoline engine. As a youth — they had called 
him rather a wild youth — he had often ridden through 
the Ozark hills at night time with his fiddle under his 
arm. But in the last eight years he had played 
the thing only once, and that once had come so near 
finishing him that he still carried the receipt of the un- 
dertaker who came to bury him the next day. 

“Oh, well,” Bob grinned into the night as he threw 
his right knee over the saddlehorn and put the fiddle 
to his shoulder, “we’ll see how she goes once more.” 

For three miles he rode leisurely on, a striking 
figure in the dim moonlight — a tall young man on a 
gray horse, fiddling wildly to the desert night. 

He crossed the bridge over the main canal, left 
the fringe of cottonwood and willow, and turned 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


across the open toward the Red Butte Ranch. The 
fiddle was under his arm. Then he saw a shack in 
the open field to the right of the road. It was one 
of those temporary structures of willow poles and 
arrow weed that serve for a house for the renter on 
the Mexican side. The setting moon was at its 
back, and the open doorway showed only as a darker 
splotch. He lifted the fiddle again. “Chinaboy, 
Jap, Hindu, Poor Man, Rich Man, Beggar Man 
or Mexican — I’ll give you a serenade all the 
samee.” 

The gleeful melody had scarcely jigged its way into 
the desert night when, in the black splotch of the 
dooorway, a figure appeared — a woman in a white 
nightdress. Swiftly Bob changed the jig tune into a 
real serenade, a clear, haunting, calling melody. 
The figure stood straight and motionless in the 
dark doorway as long as he could see. Someway 
he knew it was a white woman and that she was 
young. 

He put the fiddle back in the bag and turned in his 
saddle to mark the location of the hut in his mind — 
there was a clump of eucalyptus trees just north of it. 
Yes, he would know the place, and he would learn to- 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 7 

morrow who lived there. That listening figure had 
caught his imagination. 

But again he grinned into the night, ruefully this 
time as he remembered the disaster that had followed 
his last two experiences with this diabolical instru- 
ment of glee and grief. 

“Oh, well,” he shook his head determinedly and 
threw his leg across the saddle, “the first time was 
with a preacher; the second with a gun; now we’ll 
give the lady a chance.” 

The fiddle and the figure in the doorway had 
stirred in Bob a lot of reflections. At twenty he had 
given up his music and most of the careless fun that 
went with it, because a sudden jolt had made him 
see that to win through he must fight and not fiddle. 
For eight years he had worked tremendously hard 
at half a dozen jobs across half a dozen states; and 
there had been plenty of fighting. But what had he 
won? — a job as a hardware clerk at twenty dollars a 
week. 

“Oh, well” — he had learned to give the Mexican 
shrug of the shoulder — “twenty dollars in aland of 
opportunity is better than fifty where everything is 
already fixed.” 


8 THE DESERT FIDDLER 

That must be the Red Butte Ranch across 
yonder. He turned into the left-hand fork of the 
road. 

“Hello, there!” A tall, rambling fellow rose up 
from the side of the road. “Are you the good 
Samaritan or merely one of the thieves?” 

“Neither,” replied Bob, guessing this was a mes- 
senger from the Red Butte, “but I work for both. 
Where is your balky tractor?” 

“This way.” The rambling fellow turned to the 
right and started down the road, talking over his 
left shoulder: 

“I’m the chauffeur of that blamed tractor — I 
told Old Benson I didn’t know any more about it 
than he does of the New Jerusalem; but he put me 
at it anyhow. 

“I’m a willin’ cuss. But the main trouble with 
me is I ain’t got no brains. If I had, I wouldn’t be 
on this job, and if I was, I could fix the darn thing 
myself. 

“My dad,” continued the guide, “was purty strong 
on brains, but I didn’t take after him much. If I 
was as posted on tractors as the old man was on hell 
fire, I wouldn’t need you.” 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 9 

Something in this hill billy’s tone stirred in Bob 
a sudden recollection. 

“Was he a preacher?” 

“Yep, named Foster, and I’m his wandering boy 
to-night.” 

Bob lifted his head and laughed. It was a queer 
world. He inquired about the trouble with the 
tractor. 

“I sure hope you can fix it,” said Noah Ezekiel. 
“Old Benson will swear bloody-murder if we don’t 
get the cotton in before the tenth of April. He 
wants to unload the lease.” 

The sun was scarcely an hour high when the 
steady, energetic chuck, chuck of the tractor engine 
told Bob his work was done. He shut it off, and 
turned to Noah Ezekiel. 

“There you are — as good as new. And it is worth 
ten men and forty mules. Not much like we used 
to farm back in the Ozarks, is it?” 

“We?” Noah Ezekiel rubbed his lean jaw and 
looked questioningly at the fixer. “I’m from the 
Ozarks, but as the silk hat said to the ash can, 
‘Where in hell does the we come in?’” 

“You don’t happen to remember me?” There 


10 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


was a humorous quirk at the corner of Rogeen’s 
mouth as he stood wiping the oil and grease from his 
hands with a bunch of dry grass. 

The shambling hill billy took off his floppy- 
brimmed straw hat and scratched his head as he 
studied Bob with the careless but always alert blue 
eyes of the mountain-turkey hunter — eyes that never 
miss the turn of a leaf nor forget a trail. 

Those eyes began at the feet, took in the straight 
waistline, the well-knit shoulders. Bob weighed a 
hundred and eighty and looked as though he were 
put together to stay. For a moment Noah Ezekiel 
studied the friendly mouth, the resolute nose, the 
frank brown eyes; but not until they concentrated 
on the tangled mop of dark hair did a light dawn on 
the hill billy’s face. 

“Well, I’ll be durned!” The exclamation was 
deep and soul-satisfying, and he held out his hand. 
“If you ain’t Fiddlin’ Bob Rogeen, I’ll eat my 
hat!” 

“Save your hat.” Bob met the recognition with a 
friendly grin. 

“I never saw you but once,” reflected Noah 
Ezekiel, “and that was the Sunday at Mt. Pisgah 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


11 


when my dad lambasted you in his sermon for fiddlin’ 
for the dance Saturday night.” 

“That sermon,” Bob’s smile was still a little 
rueful, “lost me the best job I had ever had.” 

“Oh, well,” consoled the hill billy, “if you hadn’t 
lost it somethin’ might have fell on you. That’s 
what I always think when I have to move on.” And 
he repeated with a nonchalant air a nonsensical 
hill parody: 

7 eat when I'm hungry , 

1 drink when I'm dry y 
And if a tree don't fall on me 
I'll live till I die. 

Then his eyes veered round to Bob’s fiddle lying 
to one side on the grass. 

“I notice,” he grinned, “dad did not convert you.” 

“No,” said Bob, “but he cured me — almost. 
I’ve only played the thing twice since.” 

Rogeen picked up his fiddle and started for his 
horse. 

“Well, so long, Noah. You’ve got a nice place 
to work out here.” His eyes swept almost covet- 
ously over the five-thousand-acre ranch, level as a 
floor, not a stump or a stone. “If I had this ranch 


n 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


I’d raise six thousand bales of cotton a year, or know 
the reason why.” 

“That ain’t what the last fellow said,” remarked 
the hill billy, grinningly. “Reedy Jenkins was out 
yesterday figuring on buyin’ the lease; and he said: 
‘If I had it — I’d raise the rent.’” 


CHAPTER II 


B OB was out in front of the hardware store 
dressed in a woollen shirt and overalls, and 
bareheaded, setting up a cotton planter, when 
an old gentleman in a linen duster, who had been 
pacing restlessly up and down the walk like a distant 
relative waiting for the funeral procession to start, 
stopped on the sidewalk to watch him work. Whether 
it was the young man’s appearance, his whistling at 
his work or merely the way he used his hands that 
attracted the old gentleman was not certain. But 
after a moment he remarked in a crabbedly friendly 
tone: 

“Young man, you know your business.” 

“The other fellow’s business, you mean,” replied 
Bob without looking up from the bolt he was adjust- 
ing. “It is not mine, you know.” Bob had been 
repeating during the last two days the remark of the 
hill billy — “I’m a willin’ cuss, but I ain’t got no 
brains.” He had begun to wonder if he was not in 

13 


14 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


the same wagon. He had always thought he had 
brains, but here he was at twenty-eight no better 
off than the hill billy. Perhaps not as well, for 
Noah Ezekiel Foster was getting more per month 
for riding one tractor than Bob was for selling twenty. 

The old gentleman made a noise in his throat that 
corresponded to a chuckle in a less belligerent man. 

“Do you sell farm machinery over there ?” 
The store faced the line; and he nodded toward the 
Mexican side. 

“Yes,” answered Bob. 

“Know the country pretty well?” 

“Yes.” The young man rose up with the wrench 
in his hand, and looked for the first time into the 
gray-blue eyes under the bushy iron-gray brows. 
“The country is the same as it is on this side. The 
people somewhat different.” 

“Any good chances to invest money over there?” 
asked the old gentleman. 

“I suppose so.” Bob stopped to pick up another 
nut and started to screw it on. “I’m not bothered 
much hunting for investments. But I reckon there 
is a chance for a man with money anywhere.” 

“To spend it,” added the other fellow, sharply. 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


15 


“Any place will do for a fool and his money to part. 
But, young man, it is easier to earn money with 
brains than it is to keep it without them.” 

Bob’s eyes looking past the old gentleman saw a 
youngish woman dressed in widow’s weeds — very 
expensive weeds — coming rapidly down the walk 
from the hotel, and knew she was coming for the old 
man. As she came nearer. Bob saw she had tawny 
yellow hair, with slate-coloured eyes and a pious 
mouth. Her carriage was very erect, very ladylike, 
and patently she was from the East. 

“Oh, Uncle,” she gurgled and, as the old gentleman 
turned, with a little burst of enthusiasm she threw her 
arms about his neck. 

“ When did you get in, Evy?” The old gentleman 
managed to disengage the arms without giving the ap- 
pearance of heartlessness. His voice was crabbed, but 
sounded as though it might be from the length of the 
vocal cords rather than the shortness of disposition. 

“Last night.” There was an aggrieved touch of 
self-denying complaint in the tone. “And the little 
hotel is perfectly wretched, I had such a horrid 
room — and I felt so conspicuous alone. The land- 
lady told me you had been there looking for me this 


16 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


morning before I was up. I’m so glad to 
see you, Uncle; just as soon as I heard of poor Aunt 
Ellen’s death I felt that I must come and look after 
you at any sacrifice.” There was a slight pause in 
which the old gentleman did not venture a remark. 
“But, Uncle” — there was accusation in the tone — 
“why did you ever come out to this awful country? 
The dust was simply awful — I think some of my 
clothes are ruined.” 

“The old horse is across the street.” The uncle 
turned and started toward a very high-powered, 
expensive car. 

“Who was that old chap?” Bob asked of Dayton, 
who came up from breakfast just as the car drove off. 

“That’s Jim Crill — Texas oil fields. Staying at 
El Centro and looking for a place to drop his money, I 
hear. But I wonder who’s the lady? I saw her get 
off the train with Reedy Jenkins yesterday evening.” 

“A dear relative,” remarked Bob with a grin, 
“come to take care of him since his wife died — 
and he struck oil.” 

After a moment — the planter finished — Bob asked 
casually : 

“Does Benson own the Red Butte Ranch?” 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


17 


“No,” answered the implement dealer, “it belongs 
to the Dan Ryan tract. Dan is one of the very few 
Americans who has a real title to land on the Mexican 
side. When Benson leased it two years ago it was 
merely sand hummocks and mesquite, like the rest 
of the desert. Spent a lot of money levelling it and 
getting it ready to water. He lives at Los Angeles, 
and is one of those fellows who try to farm with 
money instead of brains and elbow grease. Lost 
a lot on last year’s crop, and now he wants to get 
rid of his lease.” 

Bob had been thinking of that ranch most of the 
time since he fixed the tractor. He loved the soil, 
and surely a man could get real returns from a field 
like that. 

“I wonder,” he remarked without meeting his 
employer’s eyes, “if he would sublease it?” 

“Don’t know,” replied Dayton; “Reedy Jenkins 
is trying to buy the lease.” 

“Then,” thought Bob as his employer went into 
the store, “Jenkins ought to offer a market for farm 
machinery. I’ll go up and see him.” 

On his way to Jenkins’ office Bob’s mind was busy 
with his own personal problems. He had been 


18 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


struggling with his ambitions a long time and never 
could quite figure why he did not get on faster. He 
had thought a great deal the last few days about Jim 
Crill, the old man with bushy eyebrows — and oil wells. 
Two or three things the gruff old chap had said stuck 
in Bob’s mind. He had begun to wonder if it was 
not just as easy for a fellow to make a bad investment 
of his brains and muscles as it was with his money. 
“That’s it,” he said almost aloud at a definite con- 
clusion; “I haven’t been making a good investment 
of myself. I wonder if I could sublease that Red 
Butte Ranch?” 

The more he thought of it, the more anxious he was 
to get hold of something he could manage himself. 
Of course, the idea of farming a five-thousand-acre 
ranch without capital was merely a pipe dream; 
but still, if Benson was losing money and wanted 
to get loose from his lease — it might be possible. 

Reedy Jenkins’ office was upstairs and on a back 
street. It had an outside stairway, one of those 
affairs that cling to an outer brick wall and end in a 
little iron platform. The only sign on the door was: 

REEDY JENKINS, 

Cotton. 


19 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 

It did not explain whether Mr. Jenkins raised 
cotton, bought it, sold it, ginned it, or merely thought 
about it. The office was so located that in a morally 
crusading town, where caution was necessary, it 
would have suggested nocturnal poker. But as it 
was not necessary for a poker game in Calexico to 
be so modestly retiring, Reedy’s choice of an office 
must be attributed solely to his love of quiet and 
unostentation. 

As Bob turned up the side street, two people 
were coming down the iron stairway — one a dry, 
thin man who looked as though he might be the relict 
of some dead language, wearing a stiff hat and a black 
alpaca coat; the other, a girl of more than medium 
height, who took the narrow steps with a sort of 
spring without even touching the iron rail with her 
hand, and her eyes were looking out across the town. 

“I beg your pardon,” Bob met them at the foot of 
the stairs, “ but can you tell me if Mr. Jenkins is in? ” 

It was the girl who turned to answer, and at one 
look Bob saw she was more than interesting — soft 
light hair, inquisitive eyes, an intuitive mouth — 
nothing dry or attenuated about her. 

“Yes,” she replied, with a slight twist of the 


20 THE DESERT FIDDLER 

mouth, “Mr. Jenkins is in. Have you a lease to 
sell?” 

“No.” 

“Then go on up,” she said, and turned across the 
street following the spindle-legged man who was 
unhitching two horses. 

“Blooming sunflowers!” exclaimed Bob, his heart 
taking a quick twist as she walked away, “as sure 
as I’m a foot high, that’s the girl who stood in the 
doorway that night.” 

As Bob entered the office Jenkins sat tipped back 
in a swivel chair, his left arm resting on his desk, 
the right free as though it had been gesturing. 
Reedy had rather large eyes, a plump, smooth face 
that was two shades redder than pink and one 
shade pinker than red. He always looked as though 
he had just shaved, and a long wisp of very black 
hair dangled diagonally across the corner of his 
forehead, such as one often sees on the storm-tossed 
head of an impassioned orator who is talking for the 
audience and working for himself. 

“Sit down.” He waved Bob to a chair. “I’ve 
been wanting to have a talk with you — got a proposi- 
tion for you.” 


CHAPTER III 


R EEDY JENKINS lighted a very good cigar 
and sat studying Rogeen with a leisurely 
^ air. Bob was a good salesman and began 
at once: “Understand you have been buying up 
leases, and I came up to sell you some farm ma- 
chinery. ” 

Reedy took the cigar from his wide mouth and 
laughed at the joke. “I don’t raise cotton, I leave 
that to Chinamen — I raise prices. I’m not a farmer 
but a financier.” 

Then returning the cigar to the corner of his mouth 
he remarked with a pink judicialness: 

“I should say you have a way with the ladies.” 
Bob blushed. “I never discovered it, if I have.” 
“I have, myself.” Reedy bit the end of his cigar 
and nodded with a doggish appreciation of his own 
fascination. “But I’m too busy just now to use it.” 

“Rogeen” — Reedy laid the smoking cigar on some 
papers on his desk and faced Bob — “I’ve had my 
21 




THE DESERT FIDDLER 


eye on you for some time. I am buying up leases 
across the line. I need a good man to work over 
there. What is Dayton paying you?” 

“Twenty a week.” Bob was surprised at the 
turn of the conversation. 

“I’ll give you a hundred and fifty a month to start, 
and there’ll be a fine chance for promotion.” 

“What am I to do?” inquired Bob. 

“Here is the whole thing in an eggshell. No 
doubt you are acquainted with the situation over the 
line. You know, excepting one or two big conces- 
sions, no Americans own land on the Mexican side. 
The land is all farmed under leases and sub-leases. 
If a Chink or a Jap or a wandering American hay- 
seed wants to open up a patch of the desert, he takes 
a five-year lease. As it costs him from ten to twenty 
dollars an acre to clear off the mesquite, level the 
sand hummocks, and get his ditches ready for water, 
he pays only one dollar rent the first year, two 
dollars the second, and so on. 

“Now” — Reedy picked up his cigar, puffed a 
time or two, and looked speculatively over Bob’s 
head — “if a fellow wants to speculate on the Mexi- 
can side, he doesn’t deal in land; he buys and sells 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


23 


leases. That is my business. Of course, once in a 
while I take over a crop that is planted or partly 
raised, because I have to do it to get the lease. But 
you can say on general principles I’m about as much 
interested in farming as a ground hog is in Easter. 

“The price of cotton has been low, and for various 
and sundry other reasons” — Reedy squinted his large 
eyes a little mysteriously — “a lot of the ranchers 
over there after getting their land in good shape 
have got cold feet and are willing to sell leases that 
have three or four years yet to run for nearly nothing. 

“I’m acquiring a bunch of them and am going to 
make a fortune out of them. One of these days the 
price of cotton will take a jump, and I’ll be sub- 
leasing ten thousand acres of land at ten dollars an 
acre that cost me three. 

“Now what I want you for” — he brought his 
attention down squarely to Rogeen — “is to buy 
leases for me — I’ll give you a list of what I want and 
the prices I’ll pay. If you get a lease for less. I’ll 
give you half the rake-off in addition to your wages.” 

Bob thought fast. This looked like a fine op- 
portunity; perhaps he was worth more as a buyer 
than as a salesman. 


24 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“I’ll have a try at it,” he said. “But I won’t 
sign up for any length of time until I see how it goes.” 

“That suits me,” Reedy assented readily. His 
one fear had been that Bob might want a term con- 
tract. 

“I’ll see Dayton,” Bob arose, “and let you know 
how soon he can let me off.” 

Dayton liked Bob and hated to lose him, but was 
one of those employers who prefer to suffer some in- 
convenience or loss rather than stand in the way of a 
young man’s advancement. 

“A hundred and fifty dollars a month is more than 
I can pay, Rogeen,” he said. “You’d better take it. 
Begin at once. I’ll get Jim Moody in your place.” 

At one o’clock Bob was back at Jenkins’ office and 
reported ready for work. 

Reedy reached in his desk for the map on which all 
the ranches below the line were carefully marked. 

“The ranches I want to get first are along the 
Dillenbeck Canal. It is a private water system, 
and the water costs more; but the land is rich enough 
to make up the difference. 

“The first one I want you to tackle is here” — he 
made a cross with his pencil — “Belongs to a little 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


25 


dried-up old geezer named Chandler. He is ready 
to sell; talk to the girl. Five hundred is my top 
price for their lease and equipment/’ 

As Bob went down the outside stairway he 
passed a Mexican going up — a Mexican with features 
that suggested some one of his immediate forefathers 
was probably a Hebrew. Rogeen recognized him — 
his name was Madrigal; and he remembered that 
someone had told him that the Mexican was in the 
secret service over the line, or rather that he was an 
unofficial bearer of official information from some 
shady Mexican officials to some shady American 
concerns. 

When the Mexican entered the office, Reedy got 
up and closed the door. Then he took the map again 
from a drawer and opened it out on the desk. 

“I’ll get Benson’s lease this week.” Reedy put 
his pencil on the Red Butte Ranch. “And these,” 
he pointed to smaller squares along the Dillenbeck 
Canal, “are the ones I have marked for early an- 
nexation. How many of them have you seen?” 

“Thes, and thes, and thes.” Madrigal pointed 
off three ranches. 

“I’ve sent the new man down to see Chandler,” 


26 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


said Reedy. “He’s the sort that can win over that 
girl. I must have that ranch. It is one of the best 
of the small ranches.” 

“ Si, si." Madrigal grinned, and smoothed up his 
black pompadoured hair. “Eet will be easy. I 
gave them big scare about the duty on cotton next 
fall.” 

“And then my friend who manages the Dillenbeck 
system gave them another about the price of water 
this summer,” smiled Reedy. “But” — he frowned 
— “if the girl should continue obstinate, and they 
refuse to sell?” 

“Then I’ll attend to the senorita” — the Mexican 
put his hand on his heart and bowed gallantly — 
“the ladies are easy for Senor Madrigal.” 

“Yes,” said Reedy, shutting his wide mouth de- 
terminedly, “and if he fails, I’ll ’tend to Rogeen.” 


CHAPTER IV 


I T WAS a little after sundown when Bob rode up 
to the Chandler ranch. The girl was out under 
the cottonwood trees by the irrigation canal 
gathering up dry sticks for stove wood. He hitched 
his horse and went to her. 

“Good evening,” he said. 

“Where is your fiddle?” There was a faint twist 
of amusement at the comer of her mouth. 

“How did you know?” 

“Guessed it,” she replied, with a little lift of the 
eyebrows; and then stooped to pick up the armful 
of dry sticks she had gathered. 

“Let me have them.” He stepped forward to 
take the wood. 

“Why should you?” she said, without offering to 
relinquish them. “I prefer to carry my own 
sticks — then I don’t have to build fires for other 
people.” He laughed, and followed her up the path 
toward the shack. 


27 


28 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“Let us sit down here.” She led the way to a 
homemade bench in the open. “Daddy has had a 
hard day and has gone to bed, and I don’t want to 
disturb him. He’s very tired and has been upset 
over this lease business.” 

That was an opening, but before he could take 
advantage of it she abruptly changed the conversa- 
tion: 

“But you haven’t told me why you didn’t bring 
your fiddle this time. I’d love to hear it on a night 
like this.” Dusk was coming swiftly and the stars 
had begun to glimmer. 

“Oh, I don’t carry it round as a business,” he 
answered. “Fact is, until the other night I had not 
played it but twice in eight years.” 

“Why?” She turned to him with curious in- 
terest. 

“It hasn’t usually brought me good luck.” 

“What happened the other two times?” 

He looked off at the very bright star in the west 
and smiled with whimsical ruefulness. “I love 
music — that is, what I call music. When I was in 
the Ozarks I fiddled a lot, but discovered it did not 
bring me what I wanted, so I went to work. I got 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


29 


a job in a bank at Oakville; was to begin work 
Monday. I was powerful proud of that job, and had 
got a new suit of clothes and went to town Saturday. 
That night there was a dance, and they asked me to 
play for it.” He stopped to chuckle, but still a little 
regretfully. “My playing certainly made a hit. 
Sunday morning a preacher lambasted the dance, 
and called me the special messenger of the devil. 
My job was with a pillar of his church. I didn’t 
go to work Monday morning. It’s a queer world ; 
that preacher was the father of Noah Ezekiel Foster, 
who is now working for Benson.” 

She was looking out at the west, smiling; the desert 
wind pushed the hair back from her forehead. 
“And the other time you played? ” 

“That was up at Blindon, Colorado.” He showed 
some reluctance to go ahead. 

“Yes?” 

“An old doctor and his daughter came to the camp 
to invest. I overheard them in the next room at the 
boarding house, and knew a gang of sharks was selling 
them a fake mine. I tried to attract their attention 
through the partition by playing a fool popular song — 
‘If you tell him yes; you are sure to cry, by and by.’” 


30 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“Did you make them understand?” She had 
locked her hands round her knees and leaned interest- 
edly toward him. 

“Yes — and also the gang. The camp made up 
money to pay the undertaker to bury me next day. 
I still have the receipt.” 

“You have had a lot of experience,” she said with a 
touch of envy. 

“More than the wisdom I have gathered justifies, 
I fear,” he replied. 

“Experiences are interesting,” she observed. “I 
haven’t had many, but I’m beginning. Daddy was 
professor of Sanskrit in a little one-horse denomina- 
tional college back in the hog-feeding belt of the 
Middle West. Heavens!” she spoke with sudden 
fierceness, “can you imagine anything more useless 
than teaching Sanskrit? His salary was two hun- 
dred dollars a year less than the janitor’s. I hated 
being poor; and I hated worse the dry rot of that 
little faculty circle. The deadly seriousness of their 
piffling, pedantic talk about fine-spun scholastic 
points that were not interesting nor useful a thou- 
sand years ago, and much less now that they are 
absolutely dead. I hated being prim and preten- 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


31 


tious. I could not stand it any longer, and made 
Daddy resign and go somewhere to plant something. 
We came out here and I thought I saw a fortune in 
cotton. 

“Daddy’s worked like a galley slave getting this 
field in; he’s done the work of two men. With one 
Chinaman’s help part of the time he’s got in a 
hundred and sixty acres of cotton. We’ve put 
through two hot summers here; and spent every 
dollar we got for our household goods and his life 
insurance. And now” — she was frowning in the 
dark — “we are warned to get out.” 

“Who warned you?” Bob asked quickly. 

“A Mexican named Madrigal. He has been right 
friendly to us; and warned us last week that the 
Mexican Government is going to raise the duty on 
cotton so high this fall that it will take all the profit. 
He advises us to sell our lease for anything we can 
get.” 

“Have you had an offer?” 

“Yes,” she shrugged in the dusk and spoke with 
bitter weariness, “a sort of an offer. Mr. Jenkins 
offered us $500. Daddy wanted to take it, but I ob- 
jected. I guess, though, it is better than nothing.” 


32 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


Bob stood up, his muscles fairly knotted. He 
understood in a flash why the Mexican Jew was go- 
ing to Jenkins’ office. They were stampeding the 
small ranchers out of the country, and virtually 
stealing their leases. The stars ran together in an 
angry blur. He felt a swelling of the throat. It 
was lucky he was miles away from Reedy Jenkins. 

“Don’t take it!” he said with vehemence. 

Reedy Jenkins had just opened his office next 
morning and sat down at the desk to read his mail 
when Bob Rogeen walked in. Reedy looked up 
from a letter and asked greedily: 

“Did you get it?” 

“No.” There was something ominous in Rogeen’s 
tone. 

“Couldn’t you persuade them to sell?” Jenkins 
was openly vexed. 

“I persuaded them not to.” Bob’s hands opened 
and shut as though they would like to get hold of 
something. “I don’t care for this job. I’m done.” 

“What’s the idea?” There was a little sneer in 
Jenkins’ tone. “Decided you would go back to the 
old job selling pots and pans?” 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


33 


“No,” and Bob’s brown eyes, almost black now, 
looked straight into Reedy’s flushed, insolent face, 
“I’m going across the line to raise cotton .” 

Reedy’s wide mouth opened in a contemptuous 
sneer. 

“It’s rather hot over there for rabbits.” 

“Yes,” Bob’s lips closed warningly, “and it may 
become oppressive for wolves.” 

Their eyes met defiantly for a moment, and each 
knew the other understood — and it meant a fight. 


CHAPTER V 


B OB had never known a resolution before. 
He thought he had, but he knew now that 
all the rest compared to what he felt as he 
left Reedy Jenkins’ office were as dead cornstalks to 
iron rods. 

One night nearly nine years ago, when returning 
through the hills with his fiddle under his arm, he had 
stopped at the door of his cabin and looked up at the 
stars. The boisterous fun of an hour ago had all 
faded out, leaving him dissatisfied and lonesome. 
He was shabbily dressed, not a dollar in his pocket — 
not a thing in the world his own but that fiddle — and 
he knew he was no genius with that. He was 
not getting on in the world; he was not making any- 
thing of himself. It was then that the first big reso- 
lution came to him : He would quit this fooling and go 
to work; he would win in this game of life. Since 
then in the main he had stuck to that resolution. 
He had not knowingly passed any opportunity by; 

34 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


35 


certainly he had dodged nothing because it was hard. 
He had won a little here, and lost there, always 
hoping, always tackling the new job with new pluck. 
Yet these efforts had been simple; somebody had 
offered him a job and he tried to make good at it — 
and usually had. But to win now, and win big 
as he was determined to do, he must have a job of 
his own; and he would have to create that job, 
organize it, equip it. 

“What I’ll make it with — or just how — I don’t 
know. But by all the gods of the desert I’m going 
to win right here — in spite of the thermometer, the 
devil, and Reedy Jenkins.” 

To raise cotton one must have a lease, tools, teams, 
provisions — all of which costs money; and he had just 
$167.35. But if that girl and her Sanskrit father could 
get in a cotton crop, he could. It was not too late. 
Cotton might be planted in the Imperial Valley even 
up to the last of May. He would get a field already 
prepared if he could; if not, then he would prepare it. 

And a man with a good lease and a good reputation 
could usually borrow some money on which to raise a 
crop. Bob’s mind again came back to the Red 
Butte Ranch. It was so big that it almost swamped 


36 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


his imagination, but if he was going to do big things 
he must think big. If he could possibly sublease 
that ranch from Benson. But it would take $100,000 
to finance a five-thousand-acre cotton crop. Then 
he thought of Jim Crill, the old man of the Texas oil 
fields who was looking for investments. 

It was daring enough to seem almost fantastic, but 
Bob quickened his step and turned toward the depot. 
He could yet catch the morning train for Los Angeles. 

But he passed Benson on the way. The same 
morning Bob called at the Los Angeles office Benson 
went to Reedy Jenkins in Calexico. 

The Red Butte lease had three years to run. Ben- 
son began by offering the lease and all the equipment 
for $40,000. He had spent more than $90,000 on it. 

Reedy pushed back the long black lock of hair 
from his forehead, shook his head lugubriously, and 
grew pessimistically oratorical. Things were very 
unsettled over the line: there was talk of increased 
Mexican duty on cotton, of a raise in water rates; 
the price of cotton was down; ranchers were coming 
out instead of going in; no sale at all for leases. He 
himself had not had an offer for a lease in two months. 

They dickered for an hour, Reedy watching with a 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


37 


gloating shrewdness the impractical fellow who had 
tried to farm with money. He knew Benson had 
lost money on the last crop, and besides had been 
thoroughly scared by the sly Madrigal. 

“I’m tired of the whole thing.” Benson spoke 
with annoyed vexation. “I tell you what I’ll do: 
I’ll walk off the ranch and leave you the whole damn 
thing for $20,000.” 

“I’ll take it.” Reedy knew when the limit was 
reached. “I’ll pay you $2,000 now to bind the 
bargain; and the balance within ten days.” 

As Benson left the office, with the check, Reedy 
began figuring feverishly. It was the biggest thing 
he had ever pulled off. The lease, even with cotton 
selling for only eight cents, was worth certainly 
$50,000, the equipment at least $10,000 more. And 
the five thousand acres was already planted and 
coming up! In the Imperial Valley the planting 
is by far the most expensive part of the cotton crop 
up to picking. It costs from seven to ten dollars 
an acre to get it planted; after that it is easy. There 
are so few weeds and so little grass that one man, with 
a little extra help once or twice during the summer, 
can tend from forty to eighty acres. 


38 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


It was such an astounding bargain that Reedy’s 
pink face grew a little pale, and he moistened his 
lips as he figured. He was trying to reassure him- 
self that it would be dead easy to borrow the other 
$18,000. He did not have it. In truth, he had only 
two hundred left in the bank. He thought of Tom 
Barton and two of the banks from whom he had al- 
ready borrowed. They did not seem promising. 
Then he thought of Jim Crill, and the pinkness came 
slowly back to his face. He smiled doggishly as he 
picked up the phone, called El Centro, and asked for 
Mrs. Evelyn Barnett. 

Mrs. Evelyn Barnett sat on the porch shaded by a 
wistaria vine, her feet discreetly side by side on the 
floor, her hands primly folded in her lap; her head 
righteously erect, as one who could wear her widow’s 
weeds without reproach, having been faithful to the 
very last ruffle of her handsome dress to the memory 
of her deceased. 

She had insisted on taking Uncle Crill from the 
hotel, which was ruining his digestion, and making a 
home for him. She had leased an apartment bunga- 
low, opening on a court, and with the aid of three 
servants had, at great personal sacrifice, managed to 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


39 


give Uncle Crill a “real home.” True, Uncle was 
not in it very much, but it was there for him to come 
back to. 

“Uncle,” she had said, piously, showing him the 
homelike wonders that three servants had been able 
to achieve in the six rooms, “in the crudities of this 
horrid, uncouth country, we must keep up the re- 
finements to which we were accustomed in the East.” 
The old gentleman had grunted, remembering what 
sort of refinements they had been accustomed to, 
but made no outward protests at being thus frillily 
domesticated after ten years in the Texas oil fields. 

And as Mrs. Barnett sat on the porch this morning, 
fully and carefully dressed, awaiting the result of 
that telephone message from Calexico, she watched 
with rank disapproval her neighbours to the right 
and left. It was quite hot already and Mrs. Bordon 
on the right had come out on the porch, dressed with 
amazing looseness of wrapper, showing a very liberal 
opening at the throat, and stood fanning herself with 
a newspaper. Mrs. Cramer on the left, having 
finished her sweeping, had come out on the porch also, 
and in garments that indicated no padding whatever 
dropped into a rocking chair, crossed her legs, made 


40 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


a dab at her loosely piled hair to see it did not topple 
down, and proceeded to read the morning newspaper. 
It was positively shocking, thought Mrs. Barnett, 
how women could so far forget themselves. She 
never did. 

Directly her primly erect head turned slightly, 
and her eyes which always seemed looking for some- 
thing substantial — no dream stuff for her — widened 
with satisfaction and she put her hand up to her 
collar to see if the breastpin was in place. 

It was Reedy Jenkins who got out of the machine 
which stopped at the entrance. He took off his 
hat when halfway to the porch — his black hair was 
smoothly brushed — his face opened with a flattering 
smile and he quickened his step. Mrs. Barnett 
permitted herself to rise, take two short steps forward, 
and to smile reservedly as she offered her hand. 

Reedy Jenkins had not exaggerated when he said 
he had a way with the ladies. He did have. It was 
rather a broad way, but there are plenty of ladies 
who are not subtle. 

“You have a lovely little place here.” Reedy 
gave a short, approving glance round as he took the 
offered chair. “It’s wonderful what a woman’s 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 41 

touch can do to make a home. No place like home, 
if there is some dear woman there to preside.” 

Mrs. Barnett’s mouth simpered at the implied 
flattery; but her eyes, always looking calculatingly 
for substantial results, were studying Reedy Jenkins. 
He certainly had handsome black hair, and he was 
well dressed — and the manner of a gentleman. He 
reminded her of an evangelist she had known back in 
Indiana. She had intended to marry that evangelist 
if his wife died in time; but she did not. 

“It is very hard to do much here,” Mrs. Barnett 
said, deprecatingly. “There is so much dust, and 
the market is so poor, and servants are so untrained 
and so annoying. But of course I do what little I » 
can to make dear Uncle a good home. It was a great 
sacrifice for me to come, but when duty calls one 
must not think of self.” 

“No, I suppose not.” Reedy sighed and shook his 
head until the long black lock dangled across the 
corner of his forehead — he did look like that evangelist. 
“ But I wish sometime that we could forget the other 
fellow and think of ourselves. I’d have been a mil- 
lionaire by now if I hadn’t been so chicken-hearted 
about giving the other fellow the best of it.” 


42 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“We never lose by being generous,” said Mrs. 
Barnett with conviction. 

“No, I suppose not,” Reedy sighed. “No doubt 
it pays in the long run. I know I’ve been put in the 
way of making many thousands of dollars first and 
last by fellows I had been good to.” Then Reedy 
looked at Mrs. Barnett steadily and with wide ad- 
miration in his large eyes — looked until she blushed 
very deeply. 

“It may be a rough place to live,” said Reedy, 
“but it certainly has been good for your colour. You 

are pink as a — a flower; you look positively swee ” 

He broke off abruptly. “I beg your pardon; I al- 
most forgot myself.” 

Then Reedy changed the subject to the matter 
of business on which he had come. 

“Yes,” Mrs. Barnett said, giving him her hand as 
he rose to go, “I’ll see Uncle to-night; and I’m sure 
Mr. Jenkins” — he still held her hand and increased 
the pressure — “he’ll be most glad to do it.” 


CHAPTER VI 


T HREE days after Bob had returned from 
Los Angeles and found that Reedy Jenkins 
had bought the Benson lease, he rode up 
from the Mexican side and jumped off in front of the 
hardware store. Dayton was talking to the old man 
with bushy eyebrows and a linen duster. 

“Here’s Rogeen now,” said the implement dealer. 
“Mr. Crill was just inquiring about you, Bob.” 

The two men shook hands. 

“How you cornin’?” asked the old man, his blue 
eyes looking sharply into Rogeen’s. 

“I’m starting in on my own,” replied Bob; “going 
to raise cotton over the line.” 

“Why?” The heavy brows worked frowningly. 
“Got to win through.” Bob’s brows also con- 
tracted and he shook his head resolutely. “And I 
can’t do it working by the month. Some men can, 
but I can’t.” 

“See that?” The old gentleman pointed to a 

43 


44 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


tractor with ten plows attached. “That’s success. 
Those plows are good and the engine is good; but 
it’s only when they are hooked up together they are 
worth twenty teams and ten men. That’s the way 
to multiply results — hook good things together. 
Resolution and hard work aren’t enough. Got to 
have brains. Got to use ’em. Organize your forces. 

“Don’t tell me,” the old chap spoke with some 
heat, “that a man who uses his brains and by one 
day’s work makes something that saves a million 
men ten days’ work is only entitled to one day’s pay. 
Not a bit of it. He’s entitled to part of what he 
saves every one of those million men. That’s the 
difference between a little success and a big success. 
The little one makes something for himself; the big 
one makes something for a thousand men — and takes 
part of it. Has a right to. Those Chinamen across 
the line get sixty -five cents a day. If you can man- 
age them so they earn a dollar and a half a day and 
give them a dollar and thirty cents of it and keep 
twenty cents, you are a public benefactor as well as a 
smart man. That is the way to do it; use your brains 
to increase other men’s production and take a fair 
per cent, of it, and you’ll be both rich and honest.” 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


45 


Bob’s brown eyes were eagerly attentive. He 
liked this cryptic old man. This was real stuff he 
was talking; and it was getting at the bottom of 
Rogeen’s own problem. All these years he had tried 
to produce value single-handed. But to win big, he 
must think, plan, organize so as to make money for 
many people, and therefore entitle himself to large 
returns. 

“I’m going to try that very thing,” he said. “I’ve 
just leased one hundred and sixty acres. Half al- 
ready planted in cotton, and I’m going to plant the 
rest.” 

Bob was proud of his achievement. He had been 
really glad he failed to get the Red Butte Ranch. It 
was entirely too big to tackle without capital or 
experience. But he had found a rancher anxious to 
turn loose his lease for about half what he had spent 
improving it. Rogeen then convinced a cotton-gin 
man that he was a good risk; and offered to give him 
ten per cent, interest, half the cotton seed, and to 
gin the crop at his mill if he would advance money 
sufficient to buy the lease and raise the crop. The 
gin man had agreed to do it. 

Crill jerked his head approvingly. “Good move. 


46 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


That’s the way to go at it. Think first, then work 
like the devil at the close of a revival.” 

Crill paused, and then asked abruptly: 

“Know a man named Jenkins?” 

“Yes,” replied Bob. 

“Is he safe?” 

Bob grinned. “About as safe as a rattlesnake in 
dog days.” 

As Jim Crill stalked up the outside stairway of 
Reedy Jenkins’ office, the wind whipping the tail of the 
linen duster about his legs, he carried with him two 
very conflicting opinions of Reedy — Mrs. Barnett’s 
and Bob Rogeen’s. Maybe one of them was preju- 
diced — possibly both. Well, he would see for himself. 

Reedy jumped up, gave his head a cordial fling, 
and grabbed Jim Crill’s hand as warmly as though 
he were chairman of the committee welcoming the 
candidate for vice-president to a tank-station stop. 
Reedy remembered very distinctly meeting Mr. Crill 
in Chicago five years ago. In fact, Mr. Crill had for 
a long time been Mr. Jenkins’ ideal of the real 
American business man — shrewd, quick to think, and 
fearless in action; willing to take a chance but seldom 
going wrong. 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


47 


“Evy said you wanted to see me about borrowing 
some money,” the old man dryly interrupted the 
flow of eloquence. 

“Yes — why, yes.” Reedy brought up suddenly 
before he had naturally reached his climax, floundered 
for a moment. “Why, yes, we have an investment 
that I thought would certainly interest you.” Reedy 
had decided not only to get the old man to finance 
the Red Butte purchase but his whole project. 

He began to explain his maps and figures as vol- 
ubly as though he were selling the Encyclopedia 
Britannica, and again the old man cut in : 

“How many acres you got leased?” 

“ Ten thousand — practically.” Reedy paused to 
answer, his pencil touching the Dillenbeck Canal. 

“What did you pay for them?” 

“I got most of them for about a third to half what 
they cost the ranchers.” 

“Why did they sell so cheap?” 

“Oh,” Reedy waved, vaguely evasive, “you know 
how that is; fellows are like sheep — stampede into a 
country, and then one makes a break, and they 
stampede out. Now that Benson has sold, a lot 
more of them will get cold feet.” 


48 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“ Altogether how much money have you put in 
over there ?” 

“Forty-two thousand dollars,” replied Reedy, 
consulting a memorandum. “You understand,” 
he continued to explain, “I’m not a cotton grower 
at all; I am an investor. I’m dealing in leases; and I 
merely took over the planted crop on the Benson 
leases because I got it so cheap there is bound to be 
money in it.” 

“What is it you want?” demanded Crill. 

“Seventy thousand or so for the lease and the 
crop. I have 8,000 acres already planted, some of 
it coming up. I’ll pay you 10 per cent, for the 
money, and half the cotton seed, and give you first 
mortgage on the crop. Those are the usual terms 
here.” 

The sharp blue eyes under the shaggy brows had 
been investigating Reedy as they talked. He wanted 
to make loans, for he had a lot of idle money. 
‘‘ There are two sorts of men who pay their debts,” 
the old man said to himself. “One who wants to 
owe more, and one who doesn’t want to owe any- 
thing.” Jenkins would want to borrow more, there- 
fore he would pay his first loan. Even rascals are 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


49 


usually good pay when they are making money. 
And it looked like this fellow would make money on 
these leases. Anyway, Jim Crill moved a little 
annoy edly in his chair at the thought of his niece. 
It would be almost worth the risk to be rid of Evy’s 
nagging him about it. 

“Fix up the papers,” he said, shortly, to Reedy’s 
delight. He had expected to have to work much 
harder on the old man. 

The next morning after the interview with Jim 
Crill Bob was at the hardware store assembling the 
implements he had bought, when a tall, shambling 
hill billy sauntered up. 

“Hello, Noah Ezekiel Foster,” said Bob, without 
looking up. 

“Hello,” responded the hill billy. “Reckon you 
know a hoss at long range.” 

“Reckon I do.” Bob resumed his whistling. 

“Don’t also know somebody that wants a chauf- 
feur for a tractor? Benson sold out my job.” 

“No.” Bob straightened up and looked at the 
lank fellow appraisingly. “But I know a fellow who 
wants a chauffeur for a team of mules.” 

Noah Ezekiel shook his head. “Me and mules 


50 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


have parted ways a long time ago. I prefer gasoline.” 
Then in a moment: “Who is the fellow?” 

Bob grinned and tapped himself. “I’m the man.” 
Noah Ezekiel shook his head again. 

“You look too all-fired industrious; I’d rather 
work for a fellow that lives at Los Angeles.” 

Bob laughed. “Just as you like.” 

But Noah Ezekiel ventured one more question: 
“You workin’ for Reedy Jenkins?” 

“Not much!” Bob put emphasis in that. 

“Where is your ranch?” 

“On the road a couple of miles north of Chan- 
dler’s.” 

The hill billy’s forehead wrinkled and his eyes 
looked off into empty space. 

“I reckon I’ll change my mind. I’ll take the job. 
How much am I gettin’ a month?” 


CHAPTER VII 


S OME men fail because they invest their 
money in bad business. More fail because 
they invest themselves in sorry human 
material. They trust their plans to people who can- 
not or will not carry them out. 

Bob from his first day as an employer realized 
that to be able to plan and work himself was only 
half of success. One must be able to pick men who 
will carry out his plans, must invest his brains, his 
generosity, his fair treatment, and his affections 
in human beings who will return him loyalty for 
loyalty. 

He had made no mistake in Noah Ezekiel Foster. 
Noah was a good cotton planter; moreover, he knew 
a good deal about Chinese. Bob had employed six 
Chinamen to help get the ground in shape and the 
cotton planted. 

“Noah,” Bob stopped beside the disk plow and its 
double team, “you understand mules.” 

51 


52 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“I ought to.” Noah rubbed his lean jaw. “I’ve 
been kicked by ’em enough.” 

Bob smiled. Somehow Noah’s look of drollery 
always put him in a good humour. He noticed it 
also tickled the Chinamen, who thought “Misty 
Zeekee” one of the greatest of Anglo-Saxons. 

“You see,” remarked Noah, picking up the lines 
again, “as my dad used to say, ‘He that taketh hold 
of the handles of a plow and looketh back, verily, 
he shall be kicked by a mule.’ I never calculate 
to be kicked in the back. But if that Chinaman 
over there” — he frowned at a Chinaboy who was 
fumbling over a cotton planter — “don’t get a move 
on him, he’ll be kicked wherever he happens to hit my 
foot first. Hi, there” — Noah threw up his head and 
yelled to the Chinaboy — “get a move on. Plan tee 
cotton. Goee like hellee.” And the Chinaman did. 

Bob laughed. 

“Do you reckon you could let me have five dollars 
to-night?” Noah Ezekiel asked, looking down at 
his plow. “I want to go up to the Red Owl at 
Mexicali.” 

“Not going to gamble, are you?” Bob asked. 

Noah Ezekiel shook his head. “No, I ain’t goin’ 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


53 


to gamble. Goin’ to invest the five in my education. 
I want to learn how many ways there are for a fool 
and his money to part.” 

After supper, when Noah Ezekiel had ridden away 
to invest his five dollars in the educational processes 
of the Red Owl, Bob brought a stool out of the house 
and sat down to rest his tired muscles and watch 
the coming night a little while before he turned in. 
Bob and his foreman occupied the same shack — 
the term “house,” as Noah Ezekiel said, being merely 
a flower of speech. Although there were several 
hundred thousand acres of very rich land under cul- 
tivation on the Mexican side, with two or three excep- 
tions there was not a house on any of the ranches that 
two men could not have built in one day and still 
observe union hours. Four willow poles driven in 
the ground, a few crosspieces, a thatch of arrow- 
weed, three strips of plank nailed round the bottom, 
some mosquito netting, and it was done. A China- 
man would take another day off and build a smoking 
adobe oven; but Bob and Noah had a second-hand 
oil stove on which a Chinese boy did their cooking. 

Bob sat and looked out over the level field in the 
dusk. A quarter of a mile away the light glimmered 


54 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


in the hut of his Chinese help, and there came the 
good-natured jabber of their supper activities. He 
felt the expansive thrill of the planter, the employer 
— the man who organizes an enterprise and makes it 
go. 

The heat of the day was already gone, and pleasant 
coolness was on the night wind that brought the 
smell of desert sage from beyond the watered fields. 
Bob stirred from the chair and got up. His tiredness 
was gone. The desert night had him. He went into 
the shack and took from an old scarred trunk his 
fiddle, and started down the road that passed his 
ranch to the south. He had not yet called on the 
Chandlers. 

The little house was dark. Rogeen wondered if 
the Chandlers were asleep. But his heart took a 
quicker turn; he fancied he saw something white in 
the yard — the girl was also feeling the spell of the 
desert night. 

Then suddenly, but softly, a guitar thrummed, 
and a voice with the half-wailing cadence of the 
Spanish took up the melody. 

Bob stood still, the blood crowding his veins until 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


55 


his face was hot and his whole body prickled. This 
was Madrigal, the Mexican Jew. 

The song ended. Faintly came the clapping of 
hands, and the ripple of a girl’s laughter. Bob 
turned angrily and walked swiftly back up the road, 
walked clear past his own ranch without noticing, 
and finally turned aside by a clump of cottonwood 
trees along the levee of the main irrigation canal. 
The water, a little river here, ran swiftly, muddily, 
black under the desert stars. Bob lifted his fiddle 
and flung it into the middle of the stream. 

The heat of his anger was gone. He felt instantly 
cold, and infinitely lonesome. There upon the muddy 
water floated away the thousand songs of the hills — 
the melody, the ecstasy, the colour and light of his 
early youth. 

With sudden repentance he turned and dashed 
down the bank after the hurrying current. The 
fall is rapid here, and the fiddle was already far down 
the stream. He ran stumblingly, desperately, along 
the uneven bank, dodging willows and arrowweed, 
stopping now and again to peer up and down the 
stream. 

It was nowhere in sight. A sort of frenzy seized 


56 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


him. He had a queer fancy that in that moment of 
anger he had thrown away his soul — all of him that 
was not bread and dollars. He must get it back — 
he must! Another dash, and again he stopped on the 
bank. Something darker than the current bobbed 
upon the muddy water. Without a moment’s hesi- 
tancy he plunged into the stream and waded waist 
deep into the middle of the current. 

Yes, it was his violin. Back on the bank, dripping 
wet, he hugged it to him like a little girl with a doll 
that was lost and is found. 


CHAPTER VIII 


T HE next morning at breakfast Noah Ezekiel 
remarked : 

“I wonder where that skunk got the 


money.” 

“What skunk and what money?” Bob was pour- 
ing sirup on a pancake, a product of much patience 
both on his part and the Chinese cook’s. 

“Jenkins.” Noah answered both questions in 
one word. “Not long ago he had to borrow a dime 
for a doughnut. Last night he was at the Red Owl 
gambling with both fists. And I heard he’s bought 
altogether ten thousand acres in leases. ‘Verily,’ 
as dad used to say, ‘the sinner flourisheth like a 
thorn tree.’” 

“Do you know if he has bought Chandler’s?” 
Bob asked, casually, not meeting Noah’s eye. 

“No, but I reckon he will. He seems out for a 
clean-up.” 


57 


58 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“If you see the Chandlers,” suggested Rogeen, 
“advise them not to sell.” 

Noah Ezekiel reached for the towel to wipe his 
mouth, and shook his head. 

“I ain’t strong on giving advice. I believe in 
doin’ as you’d be done by, and most all the advice 
I ever got was as hard to take as castor oil. Advice 
is like givin’ a dog ipecac — it may break him of 
suckin’ eggs, but it sure is hard on the dog.” 

Bob laughed and got up and started to work. 

The first Saturday in June Rogeen and Noah quit 
at noon, for the rush was over. 

“I reckon,” Noah insinuated, suavely, “if you are 
feelin ’ right good I might strike you for another five 
to-night.” 

“Certainly,” said Bob. “But look here, Noah, 
you ought not to gamble away your wages.” 

Noah Ezekiel pulled a long face. 

“You sound like my dad. And I ain’t fully per- 
suaded you are enough of a saint to preach.” 

“You are incorrigible, Zeke,” Bob laughed. “And 
I think I’ll go with you to-night to the Red 
Owl.” 

Noah shook his head. “I wouldn’t advise it. 


59 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 

Gamblin’ ain’t to be recommended to employers. 
It’s liable to put wages in japordy.” 

“I am not going to gamble,” said Bob. “I am 
looking for a man — a couple of them, in fact.” 

Reedy Jenkins had returned to his office about two 
o’clock after making a complete circuit of his leases. 
The crop looked fine — so everybody told him. He 
knew little about cotton, but Ah Sing was a wonder- 
ful farmer — he knew how to handle the Chinese 
labourer. 

Then he looked at his watch and frowned. He 
wished that blankety-blank Mexican would be more 
prompt in keeping his appointments. He wanted to 
get away. He was to drive to El Centro for a visit 
with Mrs. Barnett and then to-night he would return 
for a little recreation across the line. 

It was nearly four when Madrigal finally appeared, 
wearing an expensive white summer suit and a jaunty 
straw hat. “He is a handsome devil,” thought 
Reedy, eying him with disfavour because of his late- 
ness. The Mexican took off his straw hat attached 
to a buttonhole by a silk cord, and pushed up his 
black pompadoured hair. 


60 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“ Have you got the Chandler ranch yet? ” Jenkins 
came directly to the point. 

“Not yet, senor.” Madrigal’s bold, dark eyes 
smiled with supreme confidence. “Not yet — but 
soon.” 

The Mexican stood up and returned his hat to his 
head. He put up his hands as though strumming a 
guitar, turned up his eyes languishingly, and hummed 
a flirting air. 

“If this, senor,” he said, breaking off, “does not 
win the senorita, we will try — what you call hem — 
direct action. You shall have your ranch, never 
fear.” 

“And that damned Rogeen — what of him?” 

The Mexican smiled sinisterly. “He get news to- 
night that make heem lose much sleep. 

“Now may I trouble Senor Jenkins for fifty dol- 
lar?” 

Reedy grumbled, but paid. The Mexican lifted 
his hand, pressed it to his heart, and bowed with 
mocking gallantry. 

“Until to-night, senor.” 


CHAPTER IX 


R EEDY JENKINS and Mrs. Barnett sat 
in a cool, shadowed corner of the porch. 
- Reedy took a plump yellow cigar from his 
vest pocket, and with a deferential bow: 

“Will you permit me?” 

“Certainly, Mr. Jenkins.” Mrs. Barnett spoke 
in a liberal-minded tone. “I do not object at all to 
the fragrance of a good cigar — especially out of 
doors.” 

“It is a vile habit,” said Jenkins, deprecatingly, 
as he began to puff. “But after a fellow has worked 
hard on some big deal, and is all strung up, it seems 
to offer a sort of relaxation. Of course, I think a 
man ought to smoke in reason. We are coarse 
brutes at the best — and need all the refining in- 
fluences we can get.” 

“I think it is bad for the throat,” said Evelyn 
Barnett. “That is what I tell Uncle Crill. He 
smokes entirely too much.” 

61 


62 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


Uncle Crill was absent. He usually was. The 
old chap was willing for Evy to save his digestion 
within reason — but not his soul. 

“My dear friend,” Reedy made a rather impetuous 
gesture with his right hand toward the demure 
widow, “it was splendid of you to persuade your 
uncle to lend me that money for the big deal. It 
was the sort of thing that one never forgets. We 
have plenty of friends willing to help us spend our 
money, but only a few, a very few loyal ones, willing 
to help us make it. 

“Depend upon it, my dear young lady, I’ll not 
forget that favour — never. And as I promised 
before I shall give you personally one fourth of the 
profits.” 

Mrs. Barnett gave her head a little depreciating 
twist and smoothed the dress over her right 
knee. 

“That will be very generous of you, Mr. Jenkins. 
But of course one does not do things for one’s friends 
for money. Not but I can use it — to do good with,” 
she hastened. 

“My poor husband would have left me a com- 
fortable fortune in my own right if it had not been 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 63 

for the meddlesomeness of some one who had no 
business to interfere. 

“Mr. Barnett was a mine owner — and a most 
excellent business man. He had large interests in 
Colorado. One mine he was going to sell. An 
old gentleman and his daughter were just ready to 
buy it. The papers were all drawn, and they were to 
pay over their money that evening. But some horrid 
young man, a wandering fiddler or something, got to 
meddling and persuaded them not to trade. 

“It was an awful loss to poor Tom. He was to 
have had $60,000 out of the sale — and he never got 
one cent out of that mine, not a cent.” 

“What did they do to that fellow that broke up the 
trade? ” asked Reedy, puffing interestedly at his cigar. 

“Oh, Mr. Barnett said they taught him a lesson 
that would keep him from spoiling any more trades.” 
Mrs. Barnett laughed. And then accusingly: 
“Isn’t it queer how mean some people are. Now 
just that little interference from that meddlesome 
stranger kept me from having a small fortune.” 
A deep sigh. “And one can do so much good with 
money. Just think if I had that money how many 
poor people around here I could help. I hear there 


64 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


are families living across the line in little shacks — 
one or two rooms with dirt floors — and no bath- 
room. Isn’t it awful? And women, too!” 

Reedy twisted his chair about so he looked 
squarely at the widow. The sun had gone down, 
and the quick twilight was graying the row of palm 
trees that broke the skyline to the south. Jenkins 
was in a hurry to get away, but his visit was not 
quite rounded out. 

“You must be very lonely,” he said with a deep, 
sad voice — “since your husband died. Loneliness — 
ah loneliness! is the great ache of the human heart.” 

“Y-e-s. Oh, yes,” Mrs. Barnett did not sound 
utterly desolate. “But of course, Mr. Barnett 

being away so much ” There was a significant 

pause. “He was an excellent man — a good business 
man, but you know. Well, some people are more 
congenial than others. We never had a cross word 
in our lives. But — well — our tastes were different, 
you know.” 

Reedy smoked and nodded in appreciative silence. 
The dusk came fast. Mrs. Barnett rustled her 
starched skirts and sighed. 

“You know, Mr. Jenkins,” she began on a totally 


65 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 

different subject, “it has been such a pleasure to me 
to meet someone out here in this God-forsaken 
country with fine feelings — one who loves the higher 
things of life.” 

“Thank you, Mrs. Barnett.” Reedy bowed in all 
seriousness. 

A moment later when he took his leave he held her 
hand a thought longer than necessary, and pressed 
it as though in a sympathetic impulse for her loneli- 
ness — or his — or maybe just because. 

It was dark as Reedy threw the clutch into high 
and put his foot on the accelerator. He was out of 
town too quick to be in danger of arrest for speeding. 
He was late. The three others who were to seek 
recreation for the evening with him would be waiting. 

And biting the end of his cigar he said fervently: 

“Thank God for Jim Crill — and his niece.” 

Reedy’s three friends were waiting — but dinner 
was ready. They had ordered a special dinner at 
the Pepper Tree Hotel, served out in a little pergola 
in the back yard. 

They were all hearty eaters, but not epicures; and 
anyway they did not take time to taste much. 
From where they sat they could look out between 


66 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


the latticed sides of the pergola across the Mexican 
line, and see above and beyond the squat darker 
buildings a high arch of winking electric lights. 

That was the Red Owl. 

And while they talked jerkily and broadly of 
cotton and real estate — and women, their thoughts 
were over there with those winking lights. 

Just across the line there was the old West again — 
the West of the early Cripple Creek days, of Carson 
City and Globe. Still wide open, still raw, still 
unashamed. - 

Over there underneath these lights, in that great 
barnlike structure, were scores of tables across which 
fortunes flowed every night. There men met in the 
primitive hunt for money — quick money, and won — 
and lost, and lost, and lost. 

There, too, the tinkle of a piano out of tune, the 
blare of a five-piece orchestra, and the raucous 
singing of girls who had lost their voices as signifi- 
cantly as other things. And beyond that, along 
shadowy corridors, were other girls standing or 
sitting in doorways — lightly dressed. 

“Well, are you fellows through?” Reedy had 
pushed back his chair. “Let’s go.” 


CHAPTER X 


I T WAS perhaps an hour later that Bob Rogeen 
went down the main street of the Mexican town, 
also headed for the Owl. Off this main street 
only a few lights served to reveal rather than dissi- 
pate the night. But under the dimness Mexicali was 
alive — a moving, seething, passionate sort of alive- 
ness. The sidewalks were full, the saloons were busy. 
In and out of the meat shops or the small groceries 
occasionally a woman came and went. But the crowd 
was nearly all men — Mexicans, Chinamen, American 
ranchers and tourists, Germans, Negroes from 
Jamaica, Filipinos, Hindus with turbans. All were 
gathered in this valley of intense heat — this ancient 
bed of the sea now lower than the sea — not because 
of gold mines or oil gushers, but for the wealth that 
grew from the soil : the fortunes in lettuce, in melons, 
in alfalfa, and in cotton. 

“Odd,” thought Bob, “that the slowest and most 
conservative of all industries should find a spot of 


68 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


the earth so rich that it started a stampede almost 
like the rush to the Klondike, of men who sought 
sudden riches in tilling the soil.” 

Across the way from a corner saloon came the twang 
of a mandolin; and half a dozen Mexican labourers 
began singing a Spanish folk song. In a shop at his 
right a Jap girl sold soda water; in another open door 
an old Chinaman mended shoes; and from another 
came the click of billiard balls. But most of the 
crowd was moving toward the Owl. 

As Bob stepped inside the wide doors of the gam- 
bling hall the scene amazed him. There were forty 
tables running — roulette, blackjack, craps, stud 
poker — and round them men crowded three to five 
deep. Down the full length of one side of the room 
ran a bar nearly a hundred and fifty feet long, and in 
the rear end of the great barnlike structure thirty or 
forty girls, most of them American, sang and danced 
and smoked and drank with whosoever would buy. 

Bob stood to one side of the surging crowd that 
milled round the gaming tables, and watched. There 
was no soft-fingered, velvet-footed glamour about 
this place. No thick carpets, rich hangings, or exotic 
perfumes. Most of the men were direct from the 


69 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 

fields with the soil of the day’s work upon their rough 
overalls — and often on their faces and grimy hands. 
The men who ran the games were in their 
shirt sleeves, alert, sweatingly busy; some of them 
grim, a few predatory, but more of them easily good- 
natured. The whole thing was swift, direct, busi- 
nesslike. Men were trying to win money from the 
house; and the house was winning money from them. 
This was raw gambling, raw drinking, raw vice. It 
was the old Bret Harte days multiplied by ten. 

And yet there was a fascination about it. Bob 
felt it. It is idiotic to deny that gambling, which 
is the lure of quick money reduced to minutes and 
seconds, has not a fascination for nearly all men. 
As Bob stood leaning with his back against the bar — 
there was no other place to lean, not one place in that 
big hall to sit down — the scene filled him with the 
tragedy of futile trust in luck. 

All these men knew that a day’s work, a bale of 
cotton, a crate of melons, a cultivator — positive, 
useful things — brought money, positive, useful re- 
turns. And yet they staked that certainty on a 
vague belief in luck — and always, and always lost 
the certainty in grabbing for the shadow. 


70 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


Most of these men were day labourers, clerks, small- 
salaried men. It cost a thousand dollars a day to 
run this house, and it made another thousand dollars 
in profits. Two thousand dollars — a thousand days’ 
hard work squandered every night by the poor devils 
who hoped to get something easy. And some of 
them squandered not merely one day’s work but a 
month’s or six months’ hard, sweaty toil flipped away 
with one throw of the dice or one spin of the ball. 

While Bob’s eyes watched the ever-shifting crowd 
that moved from table to table he saw Rodriguez, 
the man for whom he was searching. He was with 
Reedy Jenkins and three others coming from that 
end of the building devoted to alleged musical 
comedy. Besides the natty Madrigal, the sad- 
looking Rodriguez and Reedy, there were a Mexican 
and an American Bob did not know. All of them 
except Rodriguez wore expensive silk shirts and 
panama hats, and had had several drinks and were 
headed for more. Reedy, pink and expansive, chuck- 
ling and oratorical, was evidently the host. He was 
almost full enough and hilarious enough to do some- 
thing ridiculous if the occasion offered. 

After two more rounds of drinks the party started 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


71 


for the gaming tables. The crowd was too thick 
for them to push their way in as a body, so they 
scattered. Reedy bought ten dollars’ worth of chips 
at a roulette table, played them in stacks of twenty, 
and lost in three minutes. As he turned away he 
caught sight of Bob Rogeen and came across to 
him. 

“Hello, Cotton -eyed Joe,” he said with drunken 
jocularity, “let’s have a drink.” 

“Thanks,” replied Bob, “my wildest dissipation 
is iced rain water.” 

Bob just then caught sight of Noah Ezekiel and 
moved away from Reedy Jenkins. He felt it safer 
— especially for Reedy, to stay out of reach of him. 

Noah Ezekiel’s lank form was leaning against a 
roulette table, a stack of yellow chips in front of him. 

“Hello,” said the hill billy as Bob edged his way 
up to his side. 

“How is it going?” asked Bob. 

“Fine,” answered Noah, carefully laying five chips 
in the shape of a star. “I got a system and I’m 
going to clean ’em up.” 

Bob smiled and watched. The wheel spun around. 
The ball slowed and dropped on 24. Noah’s magical 


72 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


star spread around 7. The dealer reached over and 
wiped in his five chips. 

“You see,” Noah explained, taking it for 
granted Bob knew nothing of the games, “this is 
ruelay. You play your money on one number and 
then rue it.” The hill billy chuckled at his pun. 
“There are 36 numbers on the table,” he pointed a 
long forefinger, “and there are 36 numbers on the 
wheel. You put your money or chip — the chips 
are five cents apiece — on one number, and if the ball 
stops at that number on the wheel, you win 35 times 
what you played.” 

“But if it doesn’t stop on your number?” said 
Bob. 

“Then you are out of luck.” Noah Ezekiel had 
again begun to place his chips. 

“Of course,” he explained, “you play this thing 
dozens of ways; one to two on the red or black, or 
you can play one to three on the first, second or third 
twelve. Or you can play on the line between two 
numbers, and if either number wins you*get 17 chips.” 

Noah won this time. The number in the centre of 
his star came up and he got 67 chips. 

“Better quit now, hadn’t you?” suggested Bob. 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 73 

“Nope — just beginning to rake ’em in,” replied 
Noah. 

“Wish you would,” said Bob, “and show me the 
rest of the games.” 

Noah reluctantly cashed in. He had begun with a 
dollar and got back $4.60. 

“You see,” said Noah, clinking the silver in his 
hands as they moved away, “this is lots easier than 
work. The only reason I work for you is out of the 
kindness of my heart. I made that $4.60 in twenty 
minutes.” 

“Here is craps.” They had stopped at a table 
that looked like a gutted piano, with sides a foot 
above the bottom. 

“You take the dice” — Noah happened to be in 
line and got them as the last man lost — “and put 
down say a half dollar.” He laid one on the line. 

“You throw the two dice. If seven comes up 

Ah, there!” he chuckled. “I done it.” The face 
of the dice showed *• . ! I “You see I win.” The 
dealer had thrown down a half dollar on top of 
Noah’s. “Now, come, seven.” Noah flung them 
again. 

Sure enough seven came up again. A dollar was 


74 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


pitched out to him. He left the two dollars lying. 
This time he threw eleven and won again. Four 
dollars! Noah was in great glee. 

“Let’s go,” urged Bob. 

“One more throw,” Noah brought up a 6 this time. 

“Now,” he explained, “I’ve got to throw until 
another 6 comes. If I get a seven before I do a six, 
they win.” His next throw was a seven, and the 
dealer raked in the four dollars. 

“Oh, well,” sighed Noah, “only fifty cents of 
that was mine, anyway. And the poor gamblers 
have to live. 

“This,” he explained, stopping at a table waist 
high around which a circle of men stood with money 
and cards in front of them, “is Black Jack. 

“You put down the amount of money you want to 
bet. The banker deals everybody two cards, in- 
cluding himself. But both your cards are face down, 
while his second card is face up. 

“The game is to see who can get closest to 21. 
You look at your cards. All face cards count for 
ten; ace counts for either 1 or 11 as you prefer. 

“If your cards don’t add enough, you can get as 
many more as you ask for. But if you ask for a 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


75 


card and it makes you run over 21, you lose and push 
your money over. Say you get a king and a 9 — 
that is 19, and you stand on that, and push your cards 
under your money. 

“When all the rest have all the cards they want, 
the dealer turns his over. Say he has a 10 and a 3. 
He draws. If he gets a card that puts him over 21, 
he goes broke and pays everybody. But if he gets 
say 18 — then he pays all those who are nearer 
21 than he; but all who have less than 18 lose.” 

While Noah had been explaining, he had been 
playing, and lost a dollar on each of two hands. 

They moved on to a chuck-a-luck game. 

“This, you see,” said Noah, “is a sort of bird cage 
with three overgrown dice. You put your money 
on any one of these six numbers. He whirls the 
cage and shakes up the fat dice. They fall — and if 
one of the three numbers which come up is yours, 
you win. Otherwise — ouch!” Noah had played a 
dollar on the 5; and a 1, 2 and a 6 came up. 

As they moved away Noah was shaking his head 
disconsolately. 

“Money is like a shadow that soon flees away — 
and you have to hoe cotton in the morning.” 


76 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“Don’t you know,” said Bob, earnestly, “that 
everyone of these games give the house from 6 to 
30 per cent., and that you are sure to lose in the end?” 

“Yeah,” said Noah, wearily. “You’re sure to die 
in the end, too; but that don’t keep you from goin’ 
on try in’ every day to make a livin’ and have a little 
fun. It’s all a game, and the old man with the 
mowin’ blade has the last call.” 

“But,” persisted Bob, “when you earn a thing 
and get what you earn, it is really yours, and has a 
value and gives a pleasure that you can’t get out of 
money that comes any other way.” 

“Don’t you believe it,” Noah shook his head 
lugubriously. “The easier money comes the more I 
enjoy it. Only it don’t never come. It goes. This 
here gamblin’ business reminds me of an old domi- 
necker hen we used to have. That hen produced 
an awful lot of cackle but mighty few eggs. It is 
what my dad would have called the shadow without the 
substance. But your blamed old tractor gives me 
a durned lot more substance than I yearn for.” 

They were still pushing among the jostling crowd. 
There were more than a thousand men in the hall — 
and a few women. Soiled Mexicans passed through 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


77 


the jostle with trays on their heads selling sandwiches 
and bananas. Fragments of meat and bread and 
banana peelings were scattered upon the sawdust floor. 
It was a grimy scene. And yet Bob still acknowl- 
edged the tremendous pull of it — the raw, quick 
action of the stuff that life and death are made of. 

Noah nudged Bob and nodded significantly toward 
the bar, where Reedy with his three friends and two 
or three Mexicans, including Madrigal, were drinking. 

“He’s cookin’ up something agin you,” said Noah 
in a low tone. “Better go over and talk to him. 
He’s gettin’ full enough to spill some of it.” 

Bob took the suggestion and sauntered over 
toward the bar. As he approached, Reedy turned 
around and nodded blinkingly at him. 

“Say,” Reedy leaned his elbows on the bar and 
spoke in a propitiatory tone, “I’sh sorry you went 
off in such a huff. Right good fello’, I understand. 
If you’d asked me, I’d saved you lot of trouble and 
money on that lease.” Reedy stopped to hiccough. 
“Even now, take your lease off your hands at half 
what it cost.” 

“So?” Bob smiled sarcastically. 

“Well, hell,” Reedy was nettled at the lack of ap- 


78 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


predation of his generosity, “ that’s a good deal better 
than nothing.” 

“My lease is not on the market,” Bob replied, 
dryly. 

“Now look here!” Reedy half closed his plump 
eyes and nodded knowingly. “ ’Course you are 
goin’ to sell — I got to have four more ranches to fill 
out my farm — and when I want ’em I get ’em, see? 
As Davy Crockett said to the coon, ‘Better come on 
down before I shoot, and save powder.’” 

“Shoot,” said Bob, contemptuously. 

“Now look here,” Reedy lurched still closer to 
Bob, and put his plump fingers down on the bar as 
though holding something under his hand: 

“I got unlimited capital back of me — million 
dollars — two million — all I want. That’s on ’Merican 
side — on this side — I got pull. See? Fifty ways I 
can squelch you — just like that.” He squeezed 
his plump, soft hand together as though crushing a 
soft-shelled egg. 

“You are drunk,” Bob said, disgustedly, “and talk- 
ing through a sieve.” He moved away from him 
and sauntered round the hall. At one of the tables 
he came upon Rodriguez, the man he was looking for. 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


79 


He looked more Spanish than Mexican, had a mous- 
tache but did not curl it, a thin face and soft brown 
eyes, and the pensive look of a poet who is also a 
philosopher. 

“Well?” Bob questioned in an undertone as they 
drifted outside of the gambling hall and stood in the 
shadows beyond the light of the open doors. “Did 
you learn anything?” 

Rodriguez nodded. “They have two, three plans 
to make you get out. Senor Madrigal is — what you 
call hem? — detec — detectave in Mexico. Ver’ bad 
man. He work for Senor Jenkins on the side.” 

Bob left his Mexican friend. He stood in the 
shadow of the great gambling hall for a moment, 
pulled in opposite directions by two desires. He 
remembered a red spot on Reedy Jenkins’ cheek just 
under his left eye that he wanted to hit awfully bad. 
He could go back and smash him one that would 
knock him clear across the bar. On the other hand, 
he wanted to get on his horse and ride out into the 
silence and darkness of the desert and think. After 
all, smashing that red spot on Reedy’s cheek would 
not save his ranch. He turned quickly down the 
street to where his horse was hitched. 


CHAPTER XI 


O NE of the hardest layers of civilization for 
a woman to throw off is the cook stove. 
She can tear up her fashion plates, dodge 
women’s clubs, drop her books, forsake cosmetics and 
teas, and yet be fairly happy. But to the last ex- 
tremity she clings to her cook stove. 

Imogene Chandler had her stove out in the open 
at a safe distance from the inflammable weed roof 
of the “house.” The three joints of stovepipe were 
held up by being wired to two posts driven in the 
ground beside it. 

The girl alternately stuffed light, dry sticks into 
the stove box, and then lifted the lid of a boiling 
kettle to jab a fork into the potatoes to see if they 
were done. The Chandler larder was reduced to the 
point where Imogene in her cooking had to substitute 
things that would do for things that tasted good. 

Chandler, in from the field, filled a tin washbasin 
at the tank, set it on a cracker box, and proceeded 
80 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


81 


to clean up for supper. He rolled his sleeves up far 
above his elbows and scrubbed all the visible parts 
of his body from the top of his bald head to the shoul- 
der blade under the loose collar of his open-necked 
shirt. About the only two habits from his old life 
that clung to the ex-professor were his use of big 
words and soap. 

Chandler sat down at the little board table, also 
out in the open. It was after sundown and the heat 
was beginning to abate. As Imogene poured coffee 
into the pint tin cup beside his plate she looked 
down at him with protective admiration. 

“Dad, I’m proud of you. You’ve got a tan that 
would be the envy of an African explorer; and you 
are building up a muscle, too; you are almost as good 
a man in the field as a Chinese coolie — really better 
than a Mexican.” 

“It has been my observation,” said the ex- 
professor, tackling the boiled potatoes with a visible 
appetite, “that when a man quits the scholarly 
pursuits he instinctively becomes an agriculturist. 
Business is anathema to me; but I must confess that 
it gives me pleasure to watch the germination of the 
seed, and to behold the flower and fruitage of the soil.” 


82 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


Imogene laughed. “It is the fruitage that I’m 
fond of — especially when it is a bale to the acre. 
And it is going to make that this year or more; I 
never saw a finer field of cotton.” 

“It is doing very well,” Chandler admitted with 
pride. “Yet, ah, perhaps there is one field better, 
certainly as good, and that is the American’s north 
of here; the person you referred to as a fiddler.” 

“Daddy,” and under the tone of raillery was a 
trace of wistfulness, “we’ve lived like Guinea Negroes 
here for three years, and yet I believe you like it. I 
don’t believe you’d go back right now as professor 
of Sanskrit at Zion College.” 

The little professor did not reply, but remarked 
as he held out the cup for another pint of coffee: 

“ I notice I sleep quite soundly out here, even when 
the weather is excessively hot.” 

The girl smiled and felt fully justified in the change 
she had forced in his way of living. 

“I think,” remarked Chandler, reflectively, “at 
the end of the month I’ll let Chang Lee go. I think 
I can some way manage the rest of the season alone.” 

“Perhaps,” assented Imogene, soberly, as she began 
to pick up the knives and forks and plates. She had 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


83 


not told him that when Chang Lee’s wages for June 
were paid it would leave them less than twenty 
dollars to get through the summer on. “I’ve been 
learning to irrigate the cotton rows and I can help,” 
she said. “It will be a lot of fun.” 

The ex-professor was vaguely troubled. He knew 
in a remote sort of way that their finances were 
at a low ebb. Imogene always attended to the 
business. 

“Do you suppose, daughter,” he asked, troubled, 
“that it is practical for us to continue in our present 
environment for another season?” 

“Surest thing, you know,” she laughed reassur- 
ingly. “Run along now to bed; you are tired.” He 
sighed with a delicious sense of relief and sleepiness, 
and went. 

But Imogene was not tired enough either to sit 
still or to sleep. She got up and walked restlessly 
round the camp. Known problems and unknown 
longings were stirring uneasily in her consciousness. 

She stood at the edge of the field where the long 
rows of cotton plants, freshly watered, grew rank and 
green in the first intense heat of summer. There 
was a full moon to-night — a hazy, sleepy full moon 


84 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


with dust blown across its face creeping up over 
the eastern desert. 

Just a little while ago and it was all desert. Two 
years ago when they first came this cotton field was 
uneven heaps of blown sand, desert cactus, and mes- 
quite — barren and forbidding as a nightmare of 
thirst and want. It had taken a year’s work and 
nearly all their meagre capital to level it and dig 
the water ditches. And the next year — that was last 
year — the crop was light and the price low. They 
had barely paid their debts and saved a few hundred 
for their next crop. Now that was gone, and with it 
six hundred, the last dollar she could borrow at the 
bank. Just how they were going to manage the 
rest of the summer she did not know. And worst of 
all were these vague but persistent rumours and 
warnings that the ranchers were somehow to be 
robbed of their crops. 

She turned and walked back into the yard of the 
little shack and stood bareheaded looking at the 
moon, the desert wind in her face. Another summer 
of heat was coming swiftly now. She had lived 
through two seasons of that terrific heat when the sun 
blazed all day, day after day, and the thermometer 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 85 

climbed and climbed until it touched the 130 mark. 
And all these two years had been spent here at this 
shack, with its dirt yard and isolation. 

The desert had bit deeply into her consciousness. 
Even the heat, the wind-driven sand, the stillness, the 
aloneness of it had entered into her soul with a sort 
of fascination. 

“Fm not sorry,” she shut her hands hard and 
pressed her lips close together, “even if we do lose — 
but we must not lose! We can’t go on in poverty, 
either here or over there. We must not lose — we 
must not!” 

She turned her head sharply; something toward the 
road had moved ; some figure had appeared a moment 
and then disappeared. A fear that was never wholly 
absent made her move toward the door of her own 
shack. A revolver hung on a nail there. 

And then out on the night stole the singing, quiv- 
ering note of a violin. Instantly the fear was gone, 
the tension past, and the tears for the first time in all 
the struggle slipped down her cheeks. She knew 
now that for weeks she had been hoping he would 
come again. 

When the violin cords ceased to sing, Imogene 


86 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


clapped her hands warmly, and the fiddler rose from 
beside a mesquite bush and came toward her. 

“Fm glad you brought it this time,” she said as he 
approached and sat down on a box a few feet away. 
“That was the best music I have heard for years.” 

“The best?” he questioned. 

She caught the meaning in his emphasis and smiled 
to herself as she answered: “The best violin music.” 
Although her face was in the shadow, the moonlight 
was on her hair and shoulders. Something in her 
figure affected him as it had that night when she 
stood in the doorway — some heroic endurance, some 
fighting courage that held it erect, and yet it was 
touched by a yearning as restless and unsatisfied 
as the desert wind. Bob knew her father was in- 
capable of grappling alone with the problems of life. 
This project had all been hers; it was her will, her 
brain, her courage that had wrought the change on 
the face of this spot of desert. Yet how softly 
girlish as she sat there in the moonlight; and how 
alone in the heart of this sleeping desert in an alien 
country. He wished she had not qualified that 
praise of his playing. Bob knew very little about 


women. 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 87 

“How do you like being a cotton planter?” She 
was first to break the silence. 

“Oh, very well.” He turned his eyes from her 
for the first time, looked down at his fiddle, and idly 
picked at one of the strings. “But of course I can’t 
truthfully say I love manual labour. I can do it 
when there is something in it; but I much prefer 
a hammock and a shade and a little nigger to fan me 
and bring me tall glasses full of iced drinks.” 

She laughed, for she knew already he had the 
reputation of being one of the best workers in the 
valley. 

“But this country has me,” he added. “It 
fascinates me. When I make a fortune over here 
I’m going across on the American side and buy a big 
ranch. 

“You know” — he continued softly to strum on the 
violin strings — “this Imperial Valley seems to me 
like a magic spot of the tropics, some land of fable. 
Richer than the valley of the Nile it has lain here 
beneath the sea level for thousands of years, dead 
under the breath of the desert, until a little trickle 
of water was turned in from the Colorado River, 
and then it swiftly put forth such luxuriant wealth 


88 THE DESERT FIDDLER 

of food and clothes and fruit and flowers that its 
story sounds like the demented dreams of a bank- 
rupt land promoter.” 

“I am glad you like it,” she said, “and I hope 
you’ll get your share of the fabled wealth that it is 
supposed to grow — and, oh, yes, by the way, do you 
happen to need another Chinaman?” 

“No, I’ve got more than I can pay now.” 

“We are going to let Chang Lee go the last of the 
month. He’s a good Chinaman, and I wanted him 
to have a job.” 

“Why let him go?” 

“We won’t need him.” 

“Won’t need him!” Bob exclaimed. “With a 
hundred and sixty acres of cotton to irrigate and keep 
chopped out?” 

“I can do a lot of the irrigating” — the girl spoke a 
little evasively — “and daddy can manage the rest.” 

He knew this was another case of exhausted funds. 

“Can’t you borrow any more?” 

She laughed a frank confession. 

“You guessed it. We haven’t money to pay him. 
I’ve borrowed six hundred on the crop, and can’t get 
another dollar.” 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


89 


He sat silent for several minutes looking off toward 
the cotton fields that would cry for water to-morrow 
in their fight against the eternal desert that brooded 
over this valley, thinking of her pluck. It made him 
ashamed of any wavering thought that ever scouted 
through his own mind. 

He stood up. “And are you going to see it 
through? ” 

Alone beside the field as the moon rose she had 
wavered in doubt; but the answer came now with 
perfect assurance. 

“Most surely.” 

“So am I,” he said. “Good-night.” 

But before he turned she put out her hand to 
touch his violin — her fingers touched his hand in- 
stead. 

“Please — just once more,” she asked. 

He laughed whimsically as he sat down on the box 
and drew the bow. 

“I’m proud of the human race,” he said, “that 
fights for bread and still looks at the stars.” 

He began to play: he did not know what. It 
might have been something he had heard; but 
anyway to-night it was his and hers, the song of the 


90 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


rose that fought the desert all day for its life and 
then blossomed with fragrance in the night. 

At the sound of the violin a man sitting on the 
edge of the canal by the cottonwood trees stirred 
sharply. There was a guitar across his knee. He 
had been waiting for the sound of voices to cease; 
and now the accursed fiddle was playing again. 
He spat vindictively into the stream. 

“ Damn the Americano ! ” 


CHAPTER XII 


B OB saw as he turned into the Bungalow Court 
at El Centro a youngish woman in white 
sitting on the second porch. In spite of the 
absence of the weeds he recognized her as the widow 
who had come down the street that other morning to 
meet Jim Crill. This, then, was Crill’s place. 
Evidently the twelve months of bereavement had 
elapsed, and Mrs. Barnett, having done her full duty, 
felt that the ghost of her departed could no longer 
have any just complaints if she wore a little white 
of her own. 

Bob had come to see Crill. Since that evening 
with Imogene Chandler he had worried a good deal 
about their being without money. He had tried to 
get the ginning company that had advanced his 
own funds to make them a loan. But everybody 
had grown wary and quit lending across the line. 
Bob as a last resort had come up to see if Crill could 
be induced to help. 


91 


92 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“Good morning.” Rogeen lifted his straw hat 
as he stood on the first step of the porch, and smiled. 
“Is Mr. Crill at home?” 

“No.” Mrs Barnett had nodded rather stiffly 
in response to his greeting, and lifted her eyes 
questioningly. She was waiting for someone else, 
and hence felt no cordiality for this stranger, whom 
she dimly seemed to remember. 

“When will he be in?” The young man was 
obviously disappointed, and he really was good to 
look at. 

“I don’t know exactly.” Mrs Barnett relented 
slightly, having glanced down the road to be sure 
another machine was not coming. “But as I attend 
to much of his business, perhaps if you will tell me 
what it is you want I can arrange it for you. Won’t 
you come up and have a chair? ” 

Bob accepted the invitation, not that he intended 
to mention his business to her, but he had a notion 
that Jim Crill was due to arrive about lunch time. 

“Are you from the East?” That was Mrs. 
Barnett’s idea of tactful flattery. She asked it of all 
callers. 

“Yes.” 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


93 


“What part, may I ask?” 

“All parts,” he smiled, “east of here and west of 
the Mississippi.” 

“It is so different here,” Mrs. Barnett lifted her 
brows and raised her eyes as though she were singing 
“The Lost Chord,” “from what I am used to.” 

“Yes,” assented Bob, “it is different from what I 
am used to. That is why I like it.” 

“Oh, do you?” Shocked disappointment in her 
tone implied that it was too bad he was not a kindred 
spirit. “I find everything so crude; and such loose 
standards here.” A regretful shake of the head. 
“The women especially” — she thought of her tact 
again — “seem to have forgotten all the formalities 
and nice conventions of good society — if they ever 
knew. I suppose most of them were hired girls and 
clerks before they were married.” 

Bob made no comment. He did not know much 
about “nice formalities,” but it had struck him that 
the women of Imperial Valley were uncommonly 
good, friendly human beings, and he had seen a num- 
ber of college diplomas scattered round the valley. 

“I heard of a woman recently,” Mrs. Barnett went 
on, “who in the East was in college circles; now she’s 


94, 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


living in a hut. Think of it, a hut over on the other 
side among the Chinese and Mexicans! The only 
woman there, and practically alone. It seems per- 
fectly incredible! I don’t see how any decent 
woman could do a thing like that. Why, I’d rather 
work in somebody’s kitchen. There, at least, one 
could be respectable.” 

Bob got up. 

“I guess I’ll not wait longer for Mr. Crill,” he said, 
and he went down the steps, walking with rapid 
aversion. If Jim Crill left his business to this female, 
he didn’t want any of his money for the Chandlers. 

The ginning company had agreed to lend Bob up to 
$1,500 on the crop, advancing it along as he needed 
it. He was renting his teams, and had bought very 
little machinery, so he had managed to use less than 
his estimate. On his way back to the ranch he stop- 
ped at the company’s office in Calexico, and drew two 
hundred dollars more on the loan. 

A few days later Rogeen, watching his oppor- 
tunity, saw Chandler riding alone toward town, and 
went out to the road and stopped him. After some 
roundabout conversation Bob remarked: 

“By the way, a friend of mine has a little money 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


95 


he wants to lend to cotton growers at 10 per cent. 
Do you suppose you would be able to use a couple 
of hundreds of it?” 

“Ahem!” The ex-professor ran a bony hand over 
a lean chin. “It is extremely probable, young man, 
extremely probable. I am very much inclined to 
think that I can — that is, provided he would esteem 
my personal signature to a promissory note sufficient 
guarantee for the payment of the indebtedness.” 

“That will be entirely sufficient” Bob smiled 
reassuringly, and pretended to write out — it was 
already prepared — a note. Chandler signed, and 
Bob gave him two hundred dollars in currency. 

The next evening when Bob returned from the 
field he found a sealed envelope on the little board 
table in his shack. It contained $100 in currency 
and a note which read: 

You can’t afford this loan; but we need the money so darned 
bad I’m going to split it with you. I like the fiddle better than 
any musical instrument that is made. 

I. C. 

Toward the last of June old cotton growers told 
Bob that his field was sure to go a bale and a quar- 
ter an acre, and Chandler’s was about as good. 


96 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


On the twenty-sixth of June a Mexican officer 
came to the ranch and arrested Rogeen’s Chinese 
cook and one of his field hands. Bob offered bail, 
but it was refused. The day following the remain- 
ing Chinaman was arrested. 

Bob got other hands, but on July first all three of 
these were arrested. 

“I see,” Bob said to himself, thinking it over that 
evening, “this is the first of Jenkins’ schemes. They 
are going to make Chinamen afraid to work for me. 
Well, Noah and I can manage until I can hire some 
Americans.” 

At nine o’clock it was yet too hot to sleep, and Bob 
too restless to sit still. He got up and started out to 
walk. Without any definite intention he turned 
down the road south. He had gone about half a 
mile and thought of turning back when he saw some- 
thing in the road ahead — something white. It was 
a woman, and she was running toward him. 


CHAPTER XIII 


B OB hastened to meet the figure in the road. 
He knew it was Imogene Chandler, and that 
her haste meant she was either desperately 
frightened or in great trouble. 

“Is that you, Mr. Rogeen?” She checked up and 
called to him fifty yards away. 

“Yes. What is the matter? ” 

“I’ve been frightened three times in the last week.” 
She caught her breath. “A man hid in the weeds 
near the house, and his movements gave me a scare; 
but I didn’t think so much about it until Saturday 
night, when I went out after dark to gather sticks for 
the breakfast cooking, a man slipped from the shadow 
of the trees and spoke to me and I ran and he followed 
me nearly to the house. I got my gun and shot at 
him. 

“But to-night,” she gasped for breath again, 
“just as I was going from papa’s tent to my own, a 
97 


98 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


man jumped out and grabbed me. I screamed and 
he ran away.” 

Bob put his hand on her arm. He felt it still 
quivering under his fingers. 

“I’ll walk back with you,” he said in a quiet, re- 
assuring tone. 

“Can you lend me a blanket?” he asked when 
they reached the Chandler ranch. “And let me 
have your gun, I’ll sleep out here to one side of your 
tent.” 

She protested, but without avail. 

Next morning when Bob returned to his own ranch 
he spoke to Noah Ezekiel Foster. 

“Noah, this afternoon move your tent down to 
the Chandler ranch. Put it up on the north side of 
Miss Chandler’s so she will be between yours and her 
father’s. I’m going to town and I’ll bring out a 
double-barrelled riot shotgun that won’t miss even 
in the dark. You and that gun are going to sleep 
side by side.” 

Noah Ezekiel grinned. 

Bob went to the shack, put his own pistol in his 
pocket, and rode off to Calexico. 

Reedy Jenkins sat at his desk in shirt sleeves. 


99 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 

his pink face a trifle pasty as he sweated over a 
column of figures. He looked up annoy edly as 
someone entered through the open door; and the 
annoyance changed to surprise when he saw that it 
was Bob Rogeen. 

“I merely came in to tell you a story,” said Bob 
as he dropped into a chair and took a paper from 
the pocket of his shirt and held it in his left 
hand. 

“This,” Bob flecked the paper and spoke remi- 
niscently, “is quite a curiosity. I got it up near 
Blindon, Colorado. A bunch of rascals jumped me 
one night when my back was turned. 

“Next day my friends hired an undertaker to take 
charge of my remains, and made up money to pay 
him. This paper is the undertaker’s receipt for my 
funeral. 

“The rascals did not get either me or the cash they 
were after; but they taught me a valuable lesson: 
never to have my back turned again.” 

He stopped. 

“You see,” went on Bob in a tone that did not 
suggest argument, “there is a ranch over my way 
you happen to want — two of them, in fact. The 


100 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


last week the lessees have both been much annoyed; 
the one on the south one especially. 

“Now, of course, we can kill Madrigal and any 
other Mexican that keeps up that annoyance. But 
instead, I suggest that you call them off. For the 
Chandlers have fully made up their minds not to 
sell, and so have I.” 

Bob rose. “If anything further happens down 
there, I’m afraid there’ll be an accident on this side 
of the line. It was merely that you might be pre- 
pared in advance that I dropped in this morning to 
make you a present of this.” He tossed the paper 
on Jenkins’ desk and went out. 

Reedy picked up the receipt. The undertaker, 
after Rogeen’s recovery, had facetiously written 
on the back: 

This receipt is still good for one first-class funeral — and it is 
negotiable. 

Reedy felt all the sneer go out of his lips and a sort 
of coldness steal along his sweaty skin. Under- 
neath this writing was another line: 

Transferred for value received to Reedy Jenkins. 

Bob Rogeen. 


CHAPTER XIV 


I T WAS five minutes after Bob Rogeen had gone 
out of the door before Reedy Jenkins stirred in his 
chair. Then he gave his head a vicious jerk and 
swiped the angling wisp of hair back from his fore- 
head. 

“Oh, hell! He can’t bluff me.” 

He sat gritting his teeth, remembering the insult- 
ing retorts he might have made, slapped his thigh 
a whack with his open hand in vexation that he had 
not made them; got up and walked the floor. 

No, he was not afraid of Rogeen, not by a damned 
sight. Afraid of a twenty-dollar hardware clerk? 
Not much ! He would show him he had struck the 
wrong town and the wrong man for his cheap bluffs. 
And yet Reedy kept remembering a certain expres- 
sion in Rogeen’s eye, a certain taut look in his 
muscles. Of course a man of Reedy’s reputation did 
not want to be mixed up in any brawls. Whatever 
was done, should be done smoothly — and safely. 

101 


102 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


He telephoned for Madrigal, the Mexican Jew. 
Madrigal could manage it. 

While waiting for his agent, Reedy lighted a cigar, 
but became so busily engaged with his thoughts that 
he forgot to puff until it went out. Jenkins was 
taking stock of the situation. He had boasted of his 
influence with the Mexican authorities; but like 
most boasters he was talking about the influence he 
was going to have rather than what he had. Just 
now he was not sure he had any pull across the line 
at all. Of course as a great ranch owner and a very 
rich man — as he was going to be inside of three 
years — he could have great influence. And yet he 
remembered that the present Mexican Governor of 
Baja California was an exceedingly competent man. 
He was shrewd and efficient, and deeply interested 
in the development of his province. Moreover, he 
was friendly to Americans, and seemed to have more 
than an ordinary sense of justice toward them. 

Reedy shook his head. He did not believe he could 
have much chance with the Governor — not at present, 
anyway. But perhaps some minor official might 
help put over his schemes. Anyway, Madrigal 
would know. 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


103 


The Mexican Jew came directly, dressed in light 
flannels, a flower in his buttonhole. Debonairly he 
lifted his panama and bowed with exaggerated polite- 
ness to Jenkins. 

What great good has Senor Reedy clabbering in 
his coco now?” He grinned impudently. 

Jenkins frowned. His dignity was not to be so 
trifled with. 

“Sit down,” he ordered. 

Reedy relighted his cigar, put his thumbs in his 
vest holes, and began slowly puffing smoke toward 
the ceiling. He liked to keep his subordinates wait- 
ing. 

“Madrigal,” he said, directly, “I want those two 
ranches — Chandler’s and Rogeen’s.” 

“ Si, si." The Mexican nodded shrewdly. “And 
Senor Jenkins shall have them.” 

“We’ve got to get rid of Rogeen first. Then the 
other will be easy.” 

“Et es so, senor,” Madrigal said, warmly. He 
hated Rogeen on his own account, for Senor Madrigal 
had formed a violent attachment for the Senorita 
Chandler. And the damned Americano with his 
fiddle was in the way. 


104 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“If,” suggested Reedy, smoking slowly, “Rogeen 
should be induced to leave the country within three 
weeks — or in case he happened to some accident so 
he could not leave at all — we’d make four thousand- 
out of his ranch. Half of that would be two thou- 
sand.” 

Madrigal’s black eyes narrowed wickedly, and his 
thick lips rolled up under his long nose. 

“Mexico, senor, is the land of accidents.” 

“All right, Madrigal,” Reedy waved dismissal and 
turned to his desk and began to figure — or pretend 
to figure. 

The Mexican turned in the door, looked back on 
the bulky form of Jenkins, started to speak, grinned 
wickedly, and went down the outside stairway. 

On the evening of the third of August Bob came in 
from the fields and prepared his own supper. Since 
the arrest of his Chinamen a few weeks before 
Rogeen had not employed any other help. The 
cotton cultivation was over, and he and Noah 
could manage the irrigation. The hill billy had 
gone to town early in the afternoon, and would 
return directly to the Chandler ranch where he was 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


105 


still on guard at nights. Bob believed his warning 
to Jenkins had stopped all further molestation, but 
he was not willing to take any chances — at least 
not with Imogene Chandler. 

Bob had been irrigating all day and was dead tired. 
After supper he sat in front of his shack as usual to 
cool a little before turning in. The day had been 
the hottest of the summer, and now at eight o’clock 
it was still much over a hundred. 

In that heat there is little life astir even in the 
most luxuriant fields. It was still to-night — scarcely 
the croak of a frog or the note of a bird. There was 
no moon, but in the deep, vast, clear spaces of the 
sky the stars burned like torches held down from the 
heavens. A wind blew lightly, but hot off the fields. 
The weeds beside the ditches shook slitheringly, 
and the dry grass roof of the shack rustled. 

To be the centre of stillness, to be alone in a vast 
space, either crushes one with loneliness or gives him 
an unbounded exhilaration. To-night Bob felt the 
latter sensation. It seemed instead of being a small, 
lost atom in a swirling world, he was a part of all this 
lambent starlight; this whispering air of the desert. 

He breathed slowly and deeply of the dry, clean 


106 THE DESERT FIDDLER 

wind, rose, and stretched his tired muscles, and 
turned in. So accustomed had he become to the 
heat that scarcely had he stretched out on the cot 
before he was asleep. And Bob was a sound sleeper. 
The sides of the shack were open above a three-foot 
siding of boards, open save for a mosquito netting. 
An old screen door was set up at the front, but Bob 
had not even latched that. If one was in danger 
out here, he was simply in danger, that was all, 
for there was no way to hide from it. 

A little after midnight two Mexicans crept along 
on all-fours between the cotton rows at the edge of 
Bob’s field. At the end of the rows, fifty yards 
from the shack, they crouched on their haunches and 
listened. The wind shook the tall rank cotton and 
rustled the weeds along the ditches. But no other 
sound. Nothing was stirring anywhere. 

Bending low and walking swiftly they slipped 
toward the back of the shack. Their eyes peered 
ahead and they slipped with their hearts in their 
throats, trusting the Americano was asleep. 

He was. As they crouched low behind the 
shelter of the three-foot wall of boards they could 
hear his breathing. He was sound asleep. 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


107 


Slowly, on hands and knees, they crawled around 
the west side toward the entrance. In the right hand 
of the one in front was the dull glint of a knife. The 
other held a revolver. 

Cautiously the one ahead tried the screen door — 
pushing it open an inch or two. It was unlatched. 
Motioning for the other to stand by the door, he 
arose, pushed the door back with his left hand very 
slowly so as not to make a squeak. In the right he 
held the knife. 

Bob stirred in his sleep and turned on the cot. 
The Mexican stood motionless, ready to spring either 
way if he awoke. But the steady breathing of a 
sound sleeper began again. 

The Mexican let the door to softly and took one 
quick step toward the bed. 

Then with a wild, blood-curdling yell he fell on the 
floor. Something from above had leaped on him, 
something that enveloped him, that grappled with 
him. He went down screaming and stabbing like a 
madman. His companion at the door fired one shot 
in the air, dropped his gun, and ran as if all the devils 
in hell were after him. 

The commotion awoke Bob. Instantly he sat up 


108 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


in bed, and as he rose he reached for a gun with one 
hand and a flashlight with the other. In an instant 
the light was in the Mexican’s face — and the gun also. 

“Hold up your hands, Madrigal.” Bob’s tone 
brought swift obedience. Around the Mexican and 
on him were the ripped and torn fragments of a 
dummy man — made of a sack of oats, with flapping 
arms and a tangle of ropes. Bob had not felt sure 
but some attempt might be made on his life, and 
half in jest and half as a precaution, he and Noah 
had put this dummy overhead with a trip rope just 
inside the door. They knew the fright of some- 
thing unexpected falling on an intruder would be 
more effective than a machine gun. 

“Get up,” Bob ordered, and the shaken Madrigal 
staggered to his feet, with his hands held stiffly 
straight up. “March out.” Rogeen’s decision had 
come quickly. He followed with the gun in close 
proximity to the Mexican’s back. 

Madrigal was ordered to pick up a hoe and a 
shovel, and then was marched along the water ditch 
toward the back of the field. 

“Here.” Bob ordered a stop. They were half a 
mile from the road, at the edge of the desert. The 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


109 


Mexican had recovered enough from his first fright 
to feel the cold clutch of another, surer danger. 

“Dig,” ordered Bob. And the Mexican obeyed. 

“About two feet that way.” Bob sat down on 
the bank of the water ditch and kept the digger 
covered. “Make it seven feet long,” he ordered, 
coldly. 

Slowly Madrigal dug and shovelled, and slowly but 
surely as the thing took shape, he saw what it was — 
a grave. His grave! 

He glared wildly about as he paused for a breath. 

“Hurry,” came the insistent command. 

Another shovelful, and he glanced up at the 
light. But the muzzle of the gun was level with 
the light! A wrong move and he knew the thing 
would be over even before the grave was done. 

For an hour he worked. Off there at the edge of 
the desert, this grave levelled as a part of the cotton 
field — and no one would ever find it. His very 
bones seemed to sweat with horror. Was the 
American going to bury him alive? Or would he 
shoot him first? 

All the stealth and cruelty he had ever felt toward 
others now turned in on himself, and a horror that 


110 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


filled him with blind, wild terror of that hollow grave 
shook him until he could no longer dig. He stood 
there in front of the flashlight blanched and shaking. 

“That will do,” said Rogeen. “Madrigal,” he 
put into that word all the still terror of a cool courage, 
“that is your grave.” 

For a full moment he paused. “You will stay 
out of it just as long as you stay off my land — out 
of reach of my gun. Don’t ever even pass the 
road by my place. 

“Your boss has had his warning. This is yours. 
That grave will stay open, day and night, waiting for 
you. 

“ Good-night, Senor Madrigal. Go fast and don’t 
look back.” 

The last injunction was entirely superfluous. 

After the night had swallowed up the fleeing 
figure Bob rolled on the bank and laughed until his 
ribs ached. 

“No more oat sacks for Senor Madrigal ! I wonder 
who the other one was — and what became of him?” 


CHAPTER XV 


I T WAS October. The bolls had opened beauti- 
fully. The cotton was ready to pick. As Bob 
and Noah walked down the rows the stalks came 
up to their shoulders. It was the finest crop of 
cotton either of them had ever seen. 

“As dad used to say,” remarked Noah Ezekiel, 
“the fields are white for the harvest, but where are 
the reapers?” There was no one in the fields at 
work. 

Bob shook his head gloomily. “ I have no money 
for the pickers. I owe you, Noah, for the last two 
months.” 

“Yes, I remember it,” said the hill billy, plucking 
an extra large boll of lint. “I’ve tried to forget it, 
but somehow those things sort of stick in a fellow’s 
mind.” 

In August the great war had broke in Europe. 
Ships were rushing with war supplies, blockades 
declared, factories shut down. The American stock 

ill 


112 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


exchanges had closed to save a panic. Buying 
and selling almost ceased. Money scuttled to the 
cover of safety vaults, and the price of cotton had 
dropped and dropped until finally it ceased to sell 
at all. 

“It is going to bankrupt almost every grower in the 
valley,” remarked Bob. “I’m certainly sorry for 
the Chandlers. They’re up against it hard.” 

“As the poet says,” Noah Ezekiel drew down the 
corners of his mouth, pulling a long face, “ain’t life 
real?” 

Bob laughed in spite of troubles. “Noah, I be- 
lieve you’d joke at your own funeral.” 

“Why shouldn’t I?” said Noah. “You joked 
with your undertaker’s receipt.” He grinned at the 
recollection of that event. “You sure broke that 
yellow dog Jenkins from suckin’ eggs — temporarily. 

“But ain’t he stuck with his leases though. If 
I had as much money as he owes, I could fix these 
gamblers at the Red Owl so they wouldn’t have to 
work any for the rest of their natural lives.” 

“Noah,” Bob turned to his faithful foreman, “I 
want you to stick until we put this thing through. 
I’ll see you don’t lose a dollar.” 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


113 


“Don’t you worry about me sticking,” said Noah 
Ezekiel. “I never quit a man as long as he owes me 
anything.” 

The loyalty of the hill billy touched Rogeen, but 
as is the way of men, he covered it up with a brusque 
tone. 

“You get the sacks ready. I’m going in to town 
and raise the money somehow to pick this cotton. 
I’ll pick it if I never get a dollar out of it — can’t bear 
to see a crop like that go to waste.” 

The cotton-gin people were in a desperate panic, 
but Bob went after them hard : 

“Now see here, that war in Europe is not going 
to end the world; and as long as the world stands 
there will be a demand for cotton. This flurry will 
pass, and there’s sure to be a big jump in the market 
for cotton seed. The war will increase the demand 
for oils of all kinds. 

“That cotton has got to be picked, and you’ll have 
to furnish the money. When it is ginned you can 
certainly borrow five cents a pound on it. That will 
pay for the water and the lease, the picking and the 
ginning — and the duty, too. 

“Now you get the money for me to pick my field 


114 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


and Chandler’s field. They owe only $600 on the 
crop; so you’ll be even safer there than with me. 
We’ll leave the cotton with you as security. And 
then after you have borrowed all you can on it, I’ll 
give you my personal note for all the balance I owe, 
and see you get every dollar of it, if I have to work 
it out during the next three years at twenty dollars a 
week.” 

It was that promise that turned the scales. No 
man of discernment could look at Rogeen and doubt 
either his pluck or his honesty. 

Two days later forty Chinamen, more eager for 
jobs now than ever, were picking cotton at the Chan- 
dler and Rogeen ranches — twenty at each place. 

Tom Barton went up the outside stairway thump- 
ing each iron step viciously. Six months of gloomy 
forebodings had terminated even more disastrously 
than he had feared. He found Reedy Jenkins rumpled 
and unshaven, laboriously figuring at his desk. 

Reedy looked up with a sly-dog sort of smile. 
There were little rims of red round his eyes, but it 
was plain he had something new to spring on his 
creditor. 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


115 


“I’m not figuring debts” — Jenkins reached in the 
drawer and got out a cigar and lighted it — “but 
profits.” 

“Yes,” said Barton, murderously, “that is what 
you are always figuring on. Debts don’t mean 
anything to you, because you aren’t worth a damn. 
But debts count with me. You owe me $40,000 on 
this bright idea of yours, and your leases aren’t worth 
a tadpole in Tahoe.” 

“Easy, easy!” Reedy waved his hand as though 
getting ready to make a speech. “Perhaps I have 
temporarily lost my credit; but with a requisite 
amount of cash, a man can always get it back — or do 
without it. 

“ I admit this damn war has swamped me. I admit 
on the face of the returns I am snowed under — bank- 
rupt to the tune of over $200,000. But nevertheless 
and notwithstanding I am going to get away with 
some coin.” 

“Well, I hope you don’t get away with mine,” 
growled Barton. 

A laundry driver entered the door with a bill in 
his hand. Reedy grew a little redder and waved at 
the man angrily. 


116 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“Don’t bother me with that now; don’t you see 
I’m busy?” 

“So am I,” said the driver, aggressively, “and this 
is the third call.” 

“Leave it,” said Jenkins, angrily, “and I’ll have 
my secretary send you a check for it.” 

The driver threw it on Reedy’s desk and left 
sullenly. Barton caught the figures on the unpaid 
bill — seventy-eight cents. 

“I admit,” Barton spoke sarcastically as he started 
for the door, “that your credit is gone. But if 
you don’t dig up that forty thousand, you’ll be 
as sorry you ever borrowed it as I am that I 
lent it.” 

The last of November Bob went down to the 
Chandler ranch to give an account of the cotton 
picking. 

“You have 150 bales at the compress. I put up 
the compress receipts for the debts,” said Bob to 
Imogene. “There is $3,123 against your cotton. I 
could not borrow another dollar on it.” 

“You have done so much for us already,” the girl 
said, feelingly. “And we’ll get along some way. 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 117 

If cotton would only begin to sell, we would have a 
little fortune.” 

“I have 180 bales,” said Bob, “but I owe something 
over $4,000 on it. I am going up to Calexico and 
get a job until spring.” He hesitated a moment, 
looking at the girl thoughtfully. The summer and 
hard work and constant worry had left her thin and 
with a look of anxiety in her eyes. 

“Hadn’t you also better move to town?” 

She laughed at that. “Why, dear sir, what do 
you suppose we should live on in town? Out here we 
have no rent and can at least raise some vegetables. 
No, we’ll stick it out until we see whether this war 
is merely a flurry or a deluge.” 

For a week Bob hunted a job in Calexico. His 
need for funds was acute. He had managed to get 
enough on his cotton to pay all his labour bills but 
had not kept a dollar for himself. 

Tuesday evening he had gone up to his room at the 
hotel, a court room with one window and broken 
plaster and a chipped water pitcher. There was no 
job in sight. Everything was at a standstill, and the 
cotton market looked absolutely hopeless. His note 
for the $4,000 fell due January first. If he could not 


118 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


sell the cotton by that time, his creditors would take 
it over; and besides, he was held for any amount 
of the debt above what the cotton would bring at a 
forced sale. 

He was bluer than he had been since he lost that 
first good job nine years ago. He went to the bat- 
tered old trunk, opened the lid, and lifted the fiddle; 
stood with it in his hands a moment, put it against 
his shoulder and raised the bow. He was thinking 
of her, the girl left alone down there on the ranch — 
still fighting it out with the desert, the Mexicans, 
and the trailing calamities of this World War. He 
dropped the bow, he could not play. And just as he 
was returning the fiddle to his trunk there was a 
knock followed by the opening of the door. A 
chambermaid’s head pushed in. 

“There’s a man down in the office wants to see 
you,” announced the girl. 

“Who is it?” asked Bob. 

“Dunno — old fellow with eyebrows like a hair brush 
— and a long linen duster.” 

“I’ll be right down,” said Bob. 


Jim Crill was sitting in a corner of the hotel office 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


119 


when Rogeen came down; and he motioned to Bob 
to take the chair beside him. 

“Notice a cotton gin being built across the line?” 
the old gentleman asked, crossing his legs and thrust- 
ing his hands into his trousers pockets. 

“Yes,” Bob nodded. “I wondered if you had.” 

“Reckon I have,” remarked Crill, dryly. “I’m 
puttin’ up the money for it.” 

“You are?” Bob was surprised. This upset his 
suspicions in regard to that gin. 

“Yes; don’t you think it’s a good investment?” 
The old gemtleman’s keen blue eyes looked search- 
ingly from under the shaggy brows at Rogeen. 

“Lots of cotton raised over there,” Bob answered, 
noncommittally. “And the Mexicans really ought 
to have a gin on their side of the line.” 

The old gentleman cleared his throat as though 
about to say something else; and then changed his 
mind and sat frowning in silence so long Bob won- 
dered why he had sent for him. 

“Lots of cotton raisers ’ll go broke this fall.” Crill 
broke the silence abruptly. 

“Already are,” replied Bob. 

“Know what it means.” The old gentleman 


120 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


jerked his head up and down. “Hauled my last 
bale of five-cent cotton to the store many a time, 
and begged ’em to let the rest of my bill run another 
year. That was before I ran the store myself; 
and then struck oil on a patch of Texas land. Haven’t 
got as much money as folks think but too much to 
let lie around idle. Think this valley is a good place 
to invest, don’t you? ” Again the searching blue eyes 
peered at the young man. 

“I certainly do,” answered Bob with conviction. 
“The soil is bottomless; it will grow anything and 
grow it all the year.” 

“If it gets water,” added the old gentleman. 

“Of course — but we had plenty of water this year. 
And,” went on Bob, “this war is not going to smash 
the cotton market forever. It’s going to smash 
most of us who have no money to hold on with. But 
next spring or next summer or a year after, sooner or 
later, prices will begin to climb. The war will de- 
crease production more than it will consumption. 
The war demands will send the price of wool up, and 
when wool goes up it pulls cotton along with it. 
Cotton will go to twenty cents, maybe more.” 

“That sounds like sense.” The old gentleman 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


121 


nodded slowly. “And it is the fellow that is a year 
ahead that gets rich on the rise; and the fellow a year 
behind that gets busted on the drop in prices.” 

“There are going to be some fortunes made in 
raising cotton over there,” Bob nodded toward the 
Mexican line, “in the next four years that will sound 
like an Arabian Nights’ tale of farming. 

“I figured it out this summer. That land is all 
for lease; it is level, it is rich. They get water 
cheaper than we do on this side; and I can get Chinese 
help, which is the best field labour in the world, for 
sixty-five cents to a dollar a day. I was planning 
before this smash came to plant six hundred acres 
of cotton next year.” 

“That’s what I wanted to see you about,” said 
Crill. “Want to lend some money over there, and 
you are the fellow to do it. Want to lend it to fellows 
you can trust on their honour without any mortgages. 
Guess mortgages over there aren’t much account 
anyway. 

“Want to keep the cotton industry up here in the 
valley. May want to start a cotton mill myself. 
Anyway,” he added, belligerently, “a lot of ’em are 
about to lose their cotton crops; and this is a good 


m 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


time to stick ’em for a stiff rate of interest. Charge 
’em 10 per cent — and half the cotton seed. I’m 
no philanthropist.” 

Bob smiled discreetly at the fierceness. That was 
the usual rate for loans on the Mexican side. And 
it was very reasonable considering the risk. 

“Want to hire you,” said the old man, “to lend 
money on cotton — and collect it. What you want 
a month?” 

“I’ll do it for $150 a month,” answered Bob, “if it 
does not interfere with my own cotton growing next 
spring.” 

“We can fix that,” agreed the old man. 

“I think,” replied Bob, “the best loans and the 
greatest help would be just now on the cotton already 
baled and at the compress. Most of the growers 
have debts for leases and water and supplies and 
borrowed money against their cotton, and cannot 
sell it at any price. Unless they do sell or can borrow 
on it by January first, these debts will take the cotton. 
If you would lend them six cents a pound on their 
compress receipts that would put most of them in 
the clear, and enable them to hold on a few months 
for a possible rise in price.” 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


123 


“That’s your business.” The old gentleman got 
up briskly. “I’ll put $25,000 to your credit in the 
morning at the International Bank. It’s your job 
to lend it. When it’s gone, let me know.” 

“Oh, by the way,” Bob’s heart had been beating 
excitedly through all this arrangement, but he had 
hesitated to ask what was on his mind. “Do you 
mind if — if I lend myself five cents a pound on 180 
bales?” 

The old man turned and glared at him fiercely. 

“Do you reckon I’d trust you to lend to others if 
I didn’t trust you myself? Make the loans, then 
explain the paper afterward.” 

Next morning Bob bought a second-hand auto- 
mobile for two hundred and fifty dollars and gave his 
note for it. It was not much of an automobile, but 
it was of the sort that always comes home. 

Rogeen headed straight south, and in less than an 
hour stopped at the Chandler ranch. 

Imogene was under the shade of the arrow-weed 
roof, reading a magazine. Rogeen felt a quick thrill as 
he saw her flush slightly as she came out to meet him. 

“What means the gasolene chariot?” she asked. 
“Prosperity or mere recklessness?” 


124 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“ Merely hopefulness,” he answered. “ I brought a 
paper for you. Sign on the dotted line.” He handed 
her a promissory note, due in six months, for $4,500. 

“What is this?” She had been living so long on a 
few dollars at a time that the figures sounded startling. 

“I’ve got a loan on your cotton,” replied Bob with 
huge satisfaction. “And you can have it as soon 
as you and your father have signed the note.” 

“Good heavens!” The blood had left her face. 
“You are not joking, are you? Why, man alive, that 
means that we live! It will give us $1,400 above the 
debts.” 

Bob felt a choking in his throat. The pluckiness 
of the girl! And that he could bring her relief! 
“Yes, and I’m going to take you back to town, where 
you can pay off the debts and get your money.” 

The exuberant gayety that broke over the girl’s 
spirits as they returned to town moved Bob deeply. 
What a long, hard pull she and her father had had ; no 
wonder the unexpected relief sent her spirits on the 
rebound. 

“Thank the Lord,” he said, fervently, to himself, 
“for that sharp old man with bushy eyebrows!” 

As they drove up to the International Bank where 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


125 


Bob had asked the compress company to send all 
the bills against the Chandler cotton, another ma- 
chine was just driving away and a woman was enter- 
ing the bank. 

“By the great horn spoon,” Bob exclaimed aloud, 
“that is Mrs. Barnett.” 

“Who is Mrs. Barnett?” Imogene Chandler asked 
archly. “Some special friend of yours?” 

“Hardly,” Bob replied, remembering that Miss 
Chandler knew neither Jim Crill nor his niece. 

“And the man who was driving away,” said 
Imogene, “was Reedy Jenkins.” 

“It was?” Bob turned quickly. “Are you sure? 
I was watching the woman and did not notice the 
machine.” 

As they entered the bank Mrs. Barnett, dressed in 
a very girlish travelling suit, was standing by the 
check counter as though waiting. At sight of Bob 
she nodded and smiled reservedly. 

“Oh, Mr. Rogeen,” she arched her brows and called 
to him as he started to the cashier’s window with 
Imogene Chandler. 

Bob excused himself and approached her, a little 
uneasy and decidedly annoyed. Her mouth was 


126 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


simpering, but her eyes had that sharp, predatory 
look he had seen before. 

“Mr. Rogeen,” she began in a cool, ladylike voice, 
“my uncle told me of the arrangement he had made 
with you and asked me to 0. K. all the loans before 
you make them.” 

“Is that so?” Bob felt a mingling of wrath and 
despair. “He did not say anything to me about it.” 

“N-o?” — questioningly — “we talked it over last 
night, and he felt sure this would be the better plan.” 

Bob hesitated for a moment. Imogene had gone 
to the other note counter, and was trying idly not to 
be aware of the conversation. It would be utterly 
too cruel to disappoint her now. It went against 
the grain, but Rogeen swallowed his resentment 
and distaste. 

“All right,” he nodded brightly. “I’ve got one 
loan already for you.” He drew the papers from 
his pocket. “It is six cents on 150 bales of cotton 
now in the yards. Here are the compress receipts.” 

“Whom is this for?” Her eyes looked at him chal- 
lengingly; her lips shaped the words accusingly. 

“To Miss Chandler and her father.” Bob felt 
himself idiotically blushing. 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 127 

Mrs. Barnett’s face took on the frozen look of a 
thousand generations of damning disapprobation. 

“No! Not one cent to that woman. Uncle and 
I don’t care to encourage that sort.” 

For a moment Bob stood looking straight into the 
frigid face of Mrs. Barnett. It was the first time 
in his life he would have willingly sacrificed his per- 
sonal pride for money. He would have done almost 
anything to get that money for Imogene Chandler. 
But it was useless to try to persuade the widow that 
she was wrong. Back of her own narrowness was 
Reedy Jenkins. This was Reedy’s move; he was 
using the widow’s vanity and personal greed 
for his own ends; and his ends were the destruc- 
tion of Rogeen and the capitulation of Miss 
Chandler. 

Mrs. Barnett’s eyes met his defiantly, but her 
mouth quivered a little nervously. A doubt flashed 
through his mind. Was she authorized to do this? 
Surely she would not dare take such authority with- 
out her uncle’s consent. He might telephone, any- 
way, then a more direct resolution followed swiftly. 
He turned away from Mrs. Barnett and went to the 
cashier’s window. 


128 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“Did Jim Crill deposit $25,000 here subject to my 
check?” he asked. 

“He did,” replied the cashier. 

“Are there any strings to it?” 

“None,” responded the cashier promptly. 

Without so much as glancing toward the widow, 
who had watched this move with a venomous suspi- 
cion, Bob went to Miss Chandler by the desk and took 
the papers from his pocket, and laid them before her. 

“Indorse the compress receipts over to Mr. Crill.” 

Then he wrote two checks — one to the bank for 
$3,123 to payoff all the claims against the Chandler 
cotton and one to Imogene for $1,377. 

“You don’t know, Mr. Rogeen,” she started to 
say in a low, tense voice as she took the check, “how 
much ” 

“I don’t need to,” he smilingly interrupted her 
gratitude, “for it isn’t my money. I’ll see you at 
lunch; and then take you back home in my car.” 
He lifted his hat and turned back to the counter 
where Mrs. Barnett stood loftily, disdainfully, yet 
furiously angry. 

“Well,” said Bob, casually, “I’ve made one loan, 
anyway.” 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


129 


“It will be your last.” Mrs. Barnett clutched 
her hands vindictively. “You’ll be discharged as 
quick as I get to Uncle Jim.” 

Bob really expected he would, but not for three 
jobs would he have recalled that loan and the light 
of relief in Imogene Chandler’s eyes. 


CHAPTER XVI 


M RS. BARNETT went direct from the bank 
to Reedy Jenkins’ office. As she climbed 
the outside stairway she was so angry she 
forgot to watch to see that her skirts did not lift 
above her shoe tops. As she entered the door her 
head was held as high and stiff as though she had 
been insulted by a disobedient cook. White showed 
around her mouth and the base of her nose, and 
her nostrils were dilated. 

“Why, Mrs. Barnett!” Reedy arose with an ora-* 
torical gesture. “What a pleasant surprise. Have 
a chair.” 

She took the chair he placed for her without a 
word and her right hand clutched the wrist of the 
left. She was breathing audibly. 

“Did you see Rogeen? ” Jenkins suggested suavely. 
“Yes.” The tone indicated that total annihila- 
tion should be the end of that unworthy creature. 
But her revenge, like Reedy’s expectations, was in 
130 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 131 

the future. She hated to confess this. She breathed 
hard twice. “And I’ll show him whose word 
counts.” 

“You don’t mean,” Reedy swiped his left hand 
roughly at the wisp of hair on his forehead, “that he 
disregarded your wishes?” 

“He certainly did.” Indignation was getting the 
better of her voice. “The low-lived — the contemp- 
tible — common person. And he insulted me with 
that — that creature.” 

“Well, of all the gall!” Reedy was quite as in- 
dignant as Mrs. Barnett, for very different if more 
substantial reasons. He had seen more and more 
that a fight with Rogeen was ahead, a fight to the 
finish; and the further he went the larger that fight 
looked. The easiest way to smash a man, Reedy 
had found, was to deprive him of money. A man 
can’t carry out many schemes unless he can get hold 
of money. Jenkins had kept a close eye on Jim 
Crill, and had grown continually more uneasy lest 
the old chap become too favourably impressed with 
Rogeen. He had early sensed the old man’s weak 
spot — one of them — Crill hated to be pestered. That 
was the vulnerable side at which Evelyn Barnett, 


132 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


the niece, could jab. And Reedy had planned 
all her attacks. This last move of Crill’s — hiring 
Rogeen to lend money for him, had alarmed Reedy 
more than anything that had happened. For it 
would give Rogeen a big influence on the Mexican 
side. Most of the ranchers needed to borrow money, 
and it would put the man on whose word the loans 
would be made in mighty high favour. To offset 
this, Reedy had engineered an attack by Mrs. Barnett 
on the old gentleman’s leisure. She had worried 
him and nagged him with the argument that he 
ought not to bother with a lot of business details, 
but should turn them over to her. She would see 
to the little things for him. He had reluctantly 
granted some sort of consent to this, a consent which 
Evelyn had construed meant blanket authority. 

“He flatly refused,” Mrs. Barnett was still 
thinking blisteringly of Bob Rogeen, “to obey my 
wishes in the matter. I told him plainly,” she bit 
her lips again, “that neither Uncle nor I would 
consent to money being furnished women like 
that.” 

“I should say not.” Reedy agreed with unctuous 
righteousness in his plump face. “And to think 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 133 

of that scalawag, making a loan right in your face, 
after you had vetoed it.” 

“ He’ll never make another.” Mrs. Barnett’s lips 
would have almost bit a thread in two. “Just wait 
until I get to Uncle Jim!” 

“I’ll drive you up,” said Reedy. He reached to 
the top of the desk for his hat. . 

“Of course,” remarked Reedy on the way, “your, 
uncle is very generous to want to help these fellows 
across the line that are broke. But they are riff-raff. 
He will lose every dollar of it. I know them. Good 
Lord! haven’t I befriended them, and helped them 
fifty ways? And do they appreciate it? Well, I 
should say not!’’ 

“ The more you do for people the less they appre- 
ciate it,” said Mrs. Barnett still in a bitter mood. 

“Some people,”, corrected Reedy. “There are a 
few, a very few, who never forget a favour.” 

“Yes, that is true,” assented the widow, and be- 
gan to relent in her mind, seeing how kind was Mr. 
Jenkins. 

“I’m very sorry,” continued Reedy, frowning, 
“that your uncle has taken up this fellow. I’ve 
been looking up Rogeen’s past — and he is no good, 


134 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


absolutely no good. Been a drifter all his life. 
Never had a hundred dollars of his own. 

“By the way,” Reedy suddenly remembered a 
coincidence in regard to that undertaker’s a receipt, 
“where was it your husband lost the sale of that 
mine?” 

“At Blindon, Colorado.” 

“By George!” Reedy released the wheel with the 
right hand and slapped his leg. “I thought so. 
Do you know who that young man with the fiddle 
was who ruined your fortune?” 

“No.” Evelyn Barnett came around sharply. 

“Bob Rogeen — that fellow who insulted you this 
morning.” 

“No? Not really?” Angry incredulity. 

Reedy nodded. “As I told you, I’ve been look- 
ing up his past. And I got the story straight.” 

“ The vile scoundrel ! ” Mrs. Barnett said, bitterly. 
“And to think Uncle would trust him with his 
money.” 

“We must stop it,” said Reedy. “It isn’t right 
that your uncle should be fleeced by this rascal.” 

“He shan’t be!” declared Mrs. Barnett, gritting 
her teeth. 


135 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 

“There are too many really worthy investments,” 
added Reedy. 

“I’ll see that this is the last money that man gets,” 
Mrs. Barnett asseverated. 

“Your uncle is a little bull headed, isn’t he?” 
suggested Reedy, cautiously. “Better be careful 
how you approach him.” 

“Oh, I’ll manage him, never fear,” she said 
positively. 

Jenkins set Mrs. Barnett down at the entrance 
to the bungalow court. He* preferred that Jim 
Crill should not see him with her. It might lead 
him to think Reedy was trying to influence her. 

As Mrs. Barnett stalked up the steps, Jim Crill 
was sitting on the porch in his shirt sleeves, smoking. 

“How are you feeling, dear?” she asked, solici- 
tously. 

“Ain’t feelin’,” Crill grunted — “I’m comfortable.” 

Evelyn sank into a chair, held her hands, and 
sighed. 

“Oh, dear, it is so lonely since poor Tom Barnett 
died.” 

Uncle Jim puffed on — he had some faint knowledge 
of the poor deceased Tom. 


136 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“Do you know, Uncle Jim, I made a discovery 
to-day. The man who kept my poor husband from 
making a fortune was that person.” 

“What person?” growled the old chap looking 
straight ahead. 

“ That Rogeen person you are trusting your money 
to.” 

Jim Crill bit his pipe stem to hide a dry grin. He 
had often heard the story of the bursted mine sale. 
He had some suspicions, knowing Barnett, of what 
the mine really was. 

“And, Uncle Jim, of course you won’t keep him. 
Besides, he insulted me this morning.” 

“How?” It was another grunt. 

Evelyn went into the painful details of her humilia- 
tion at the bank. When she got through Uncle 
Jim turned sharply in his chair. 

“Did you do that?” 

“Do what?” gasped Evelyn. 

“Try to interfere with his loans?” 

“Why, why, yes.” She was aghast at the tone, 
ready to shed protective tears. “Didn’t you 
tell me — wasn’t I to have charge of the little 
things?” 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


137 


“Oh, hell!” Uncle Jim burst out. “Little things, 
yes — about the house I meant. Not my business. 
Dry up that sobbing now — and don’t monkey any 
more with my business.” 

Uncle Jim got up and stalked off downtown. 


CHAPTER XVII 


E ARLY one morning in March Bob picked 
Noah Ezekiel Foster up at a lunch counter 
where the hill billy was just finishing his 
fourth waffle. 

“Want you to go out and look at two or three 
leases with me,” said Rogeen as they got into the 
small car. 

Bob had not lost his job with Crill over the 
Chandler loan. He was still lending the old gentle- 
man’s money and doing it without Mrs. Barnett’s 
approval. But the widow had, he felt sure, done the 
moist, self-sacrificing, nagging stunt so persistently 
that her uncle had compromised by advancing much 
more money to Reedy Jenkins than safety justified. 
Crill had never mentioned the matter, but Bob 
knew Jenkins had got money from somewhere, and 
there certainly was no one else in the valley that 
would have lent it to him. For Reedy had managed 

to pick his cotton and gin it at the new gin on the 
138 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 139 

Mexican side, where the bales were still stacked in 
the yards. 

“Why do you suppose,” asked Bob as they drove 
south past the Mexican gin, “Jenkins has left his 
cotton over on this side all winter?” Bob had 
formulated his own suspicions but wanted to learn 
what Noah Ezekiel thought, for Noah picked up 
a lot of shrewd information. 

“Shucks,” said Noah, “it’s so plain that a way- 
farin’ man though a cotton grower can see. He’s 
kept it over there because he owes about three 
hundred thousand dollars on the American side, 
and as quick as he takes it across the line there’ll 
be about as many fellows pullin’ at every bale as 
there are ahold of them overall pants you see 
advertised.” 

“But cotton is selling now; it was six cents yester- 
day,” remarked Bob. “At that he ought to have 
enough to pay his debts.” 

Noah Ezekiel snorted: “Reedy isn’t livin’ to 
pay his debts. He ain’t hankerin’ for receipts; 
what he wants is currency. His creditors on the 
American side are layin’ low, because they can’t do 
anything else. Reedy put one over on ’em when 


140 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


he built this gin. He can hold his cotton over 
here for high prices, and let them that he owes on the 
American side go somewhere and whistle in a rain 
barrel to keep from gettin’ dry. 

“As my dad used to say, ‘The children of this 
world can give the children of light four aces and still 
take the jack pot with a pair of deuces.’ ” 

Bob knew Noah was right. He had watched 
Jenkins pretty closely all winter. Reedy had en- 
deavoured to convince all his creditors, and succeeded 
in convincing some, that he had not brought the 
cotton across the line because there was no market 
yet for it. “It is costing us nothing to leave it over 
there, so why bring it across and have to pay stor- 
age and also lose the interest on the $25,000 Mexican 
export duty which we must pay when it is removed?” 

“Noah,” remarked Bob, as the little car bumped 
across the bridge over the irrigation ditch, “I’m 
taking you out to see a Chinaman’s lease. He has 
three hundred acres ready to plant and wants to 
borrow money to raise the crop. If you like the 
field and I like the Chinaman, I’m going to make the 
' loan.” 

“Accordin’ to my observation,” remarked Noah, 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 141 

“a heathen Chinese has about all the virtues that a 
Christian ought to have, but ain’t regularly got. 

“The other mornin’ after I’d been to the Red 
Owl the night before, I felt like I needed a cup of 
coffee. I went round to a Chink that I’d never met 
but two or three times, and says, 4 John, I’m broke, 
will you lend me a hundred dollars?’ 

“That blasted Chink never batted an eye, never 
asked me if I owned any personal property subject 
to mortgage, nor if I could get three good men to go 
on my note. He just says, ‘Surlee, Misty Foster,’ 
and dived down in a greasy old drawer and began 
to count out greenbacks. ‘Here,’ I says, ‘if you are 
that much of a Christian, I ain’t an all-fired heathen 
myself. Give me a dime and keep the change.’ ” 

Bob smiled appreciatively. “I’ve seen things 
like that happen more than once. And it is not be- 
cause they are simple and ignorant either.” 

“You know,” pursued Noah Ezekiel, “if I’s 
Karniggy, I’d send a lot of ’em out as missionaries.” 

They were at Ah Sing’s ranch. The three- 
hundred-acre field was level as a table, broken deep, 
thoroughly disked, and listed ready to water. The 
Chinaman, without any money or the slightest assur- 


142 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


ance he could get any for his planting, had worked all 
winter preparing the fields. 

Ah Sing stood in front of his weed-and-pole shack 
waiting with that stoical anxiety which never be- 
trays itself by hurry or nervousness. If the man of 
money came and saw fit to lend, “vellee well — if not, 
doee best I can.” 

“You go out and take a look at the field,” Bob 
directed Noah, “see if there is any marsh grass or 
alfalfa roots, and look over his water ditches while I 
talk to the Chinaman.” 

“Good morning, Ah Sing,” he said, extending his 
hand. 

“Good morning, Misty Rogee.” The Chinaman 
smiled and gave the visitor a friendly handshake. He 
was of medium height, had a well-shaped head and 
dignified bearing, and eyes that met yours straight. 
He looked about forty, but one never knows the age 
of a Chinaman. 

“Nice farm, Ah Sing,” Bob nodded approvingly 
at the well-plowed fields. 

“He do vellee well.” The Chinaman was pleased. 

“And you have no money to make a crop?” Bob 
asked. 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


143 


“No money,” Ah Sing said, stoically. 

“I heard last fall you had made a good deal of 
money raising cotton over here,” suggested Bob. 

“Me make some,” admitted Ah Sing. “Workee 
vellee hard many year — make maybe eighteen — 
twentee thousan’.” 

“What became of it, Ah Sing? Don’t gamble, 
'do you?” 

The Chinaman shook his head emphatically. “Me 
no gamble. Gamble — nobody trust. Me pick cot- 
ton for Misty Jenkins.” 

Bob was interested in that. He knew that after 
raising Jenkins ’ crop Ah Sing had taken the contract 
to pick it. Bob had heard other things but not from 
the Chinaman. “Didn’t you make some money on 
that, too?” 

“No money.” 

“Why not?” Bob spoke quickly. “Tell me about 
it, Ah Sing.” 

The Chinaman sighed again and the long, long 
look came into his patient oriental eyes. 

“Ah work in America ever since leetle boy — so 
high. After while I save leetle money. Want go 
back China visit. I have cer-tificate. When I 


144 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


come back, say it’s no good. Put me in jail. 
Don’t know why. Stay long time. Send me back 
China. Then I come Mexico. Can’t cross line; 
say damn Mexican Chinaman. I raise cotton — I 
raise lettuce — make leetle money. Maybee twent’ 
thousan’. 

“Misty Jenkins say ‘Ah Sing, want pick my 
cotton?’ I say, ‘Maybee.’ He say, ‘Give you ten 
dollar bale. You do all work — feed Chinamen.’ 
I say, ‘Vellee well.’ Lots Chinaboys need work. 
I hire seven hund ’ — eight hund ’ — maybee thou- 
sand I feed ’em. I pick cotton. Pick eight 
thousan’ bale. Take all my money feed ’em. I 
owe Chinaboys fifty thousan ’ dollar. 

“No pay. No see Misty Jenkins. No cross line. 
Misty Jenkins pay sometime maybee — maybee not.” 
The old Chinaman shook his head fatalistically. 

“And you spent all you had earned and saved in 
forty years, and then went in debt fifty thousand to 
other Chinamen to pick that cotton, and he hasn’t 
paid you a dollar?” 

“No pay yet; maybee some time,” he replied, 
stoically. 

“What a damn shame!” Bob seldom swore, but 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


145 


he felt justified for this once. “Can’t you collect it 
under the Mexican laws?” 

Ah Sing slowly, futilely, turned his hands palms 
outward. 

“Mexican say Misty Jenkins big man. Damn 
Chinaman no good no way.” 

Noah Ezekiel came in from the field. 

“As my dad says,” remarked the hill billy, “this 
Chink has held on to the handle of the plow without 
ever looking back. The field is O. K.” 

“How much will you need, Ah Sing?” Bob 
turned to the Chinaman. 

“Maybee get along with thousan’ dollars — fifteen 
liund’ maybee.” 

“All right,” said Bob, “I’m going to let you have 
it. You can get the money three hundred at a time 
as you need it.” 

Bob stood thinking for a moment. 

“Ah Sing,” he said, decisively, “how would you 
like to have a partner? Suppose I go in with you; 
furnish the money and look after the buying and sell- 
ing, tend to the business end; you raise the cotton. 
Me pay all the expenses, including wages, for you; 
and then divide the profits?” 


146 THE DESERT FIDDLER 

The Chinaman’s face lost its stoic endurance and 
lighted with relief. 

“I likee him vellee much!” He put out his hand. 
“Me and you partners, heh?” 

“Yes,” Bob gripped the hand, “we are partners.” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


OTHING Bob Rogeen had ever heard about 



Reedy Jenkins and his schemes had so in- 
tensified his anger as this treatment of the 


patient, defenceless Ah Sing. 

“A Chinaman has the system/’ remarked Noah 
Ezekiel as they drove away. “He’ll lease a ranch, 
then take in half a dozen partners and put a partner 
in charge of each section of the field. Raisin ’ cotton 
is all-fired particular work, especially with borrowed 
water — there are as many ways to ruin it as there are 
to spoil a pancake. And a partner isn’t so apt to 
go to sleep at the ditch.” 

“That is why I went into partnership with Ah 
Sing,” said Bob. “I have never seen much money 
made in farming anywhere unless a man who had an 
interest in the crop was on the job.” 

“You bet you haven’t,” agreed Noah Ezekiel. 
“Absent treatment may remove warts and bad 


147 


148 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


dispositions, but it sure won’t work on cockleburs 
and Bermuda grass.” 

For several miles Bob’s mind was busy. 

“Noah,” he asked, abruptly, “how would you 
like to go into partnership with me and take over the 
management of that hundred and sixty acres we 
cultivated last year?” 

“As my dad used to say,” replied Noah Ezekiel, 
skeptically, “‘Faith is the substance of things 
hoped for’; and as I never hope for any substance, 
I ain’t got no faith — especially in profits. When- 
ever I come round, profits hide out like a bunch 
of quails on a rainy day. I prefer wages.” 

Bob laughed. “Suppose we make it both. I’ll 
pay you wages, and besides give you one fifth of the 
net profits.” 

“I reckon that’ll be satisfactory,” agreed Noah. 
“But any Saturday night you find yourself a little 
short on net profits, you can buy my share for about 
twenty dollars in real money.” 

As they crossed the line Noah Ezekiel inquired: 

“But if me and the Chinaman raise your cotton, 
what are you goin’ to do?” 

“Raise more cotton,” Bob answered. “You 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


149 


know,” he spoke what had been in his mind all the 
time, “I never saw anything I wanted as much as 
that Red Butte Ranch. It is on that Dillenbeck 
System and its water costs about twice as much 
as on the regular canals, but it is rich enough to make 
up the difference.” 

“Well, why don’t you get it?” asked Noah. 
“Reedy Jenkins is goin’ to lose all his leases inside 
of a month if he doesn’t sell ’em; and with cotton at 
six cents, they ain’t shovin ’ each other off of Reedy’s 
stairway tryin’ to get to him first. It’s my idea 
that a fellow could buy out the Red Butte for a song, 
and hire a parrot to sing it for a cracker.” 

“But that is the smallest part of it,” said Bob. 
“To farm that five thousand acres in cotton this 
season would take round a hundred thousand dol- 
lars, and,” he laughed, “I lack considerable over 
ninety-nine thousand of having that much.” 

“Lend it to yourself out of money you are lending 
for old Crill,” suggested Noah. 

After Bob dropped Noah at the Greek restaurant 
— “Open Day and Night — Waffles” — he drove down 
the street, stopped in front of an office building, and 
went up to see a lawyer that he knew. 


150 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“ T . J.,” he began at once, “I want you to see what 
is the lowest dollar that will buy the Red Butte 
Ranch and its equipment. Reedy Jenkins can’t 
farm it, and he can’t afford to pay $15,000 rent and 
let it lie idle. You ought to be able to get it cheap. 
Get a rock-bottom offer, but don’t by any means 
let him know who wants it.” 

As Bob went down the stairs his head was fairly 
whizzing with plans. This thing had taken strong 
hold of him. He had longed for many months to get 
possession of that ranch but had never seriously 
thought of it as a possibility. But if Jim Crill 
would risk the money, it would be the great op- 
portunity. Five thousand acres of cotton might 
make a big fortune in one year. 

“Of course” — doubt had its inning as he drove 
north toward El Centro — “if he failed it would 
mean, instead of a fortune, a lifetime debt.” Yet 
he was so feverishly hopeful he let out the 
little machine a few notches beyond the speed 
limit. At El Centro he went direct to the Crill 
bungalow. 

Mrs. Barnett opened the door when he knocked, 
opened it about fourteen inches, and stood looking 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 151 

at him as though he were a leper and had eaten 
onions besides. 

“Is Mr. Crill in?” Bob asked. 

“Mr. Crill is not in.” She bit off each word with the 
finality of a closed argument and shut the door with 
a whack so decisive it was almost a slam. 

Bob found Jim Crill in the lobby of the hotel, 
smoking; he sat down by him, and concentrated for a 
moment on the line of argument he had thought 
out. 

“Mr. Crill, cotton is selling at six cents now. It 
won’t go any lower.” 

“It doesn’t need to as far as I’m concerned.” 
The old gentleman puffed his pipe vigorously. 

“It will be at least ten cents this fall.” Bob was 
figuring on the back of an old envelope. “Much 
more next year.” 

Then he opened up on the Red Butte Ranch. 
Bob never did such talking in his life. He knew 
every step of his plan, for he had thought out fifty 
times just what he would do with that ranch if he 
had it. He outlined this plan clearly and definitely 
to Jim Crill. He carefully estimated every expense, 
and allowed liberally for incidentals. He figured 


152 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


the lowest probable price for cotton, and in addition 
discussed the possibilities of failure. 

“I feel sure,” he concluded, definitely, “that I can 
put it through, that I can make from fifty to a 
hundred and fifty thousand dollars in profits on one 
crop. If you want to risk it and stake me, I’ll go 
fifty-fifty on the profits.” 

“No partnership for me,” Crill shook his head 
vigorously. He had made some figures on an 
envelope and sat scowling at them. He had a good 
deal of idle money. If this crop paid out — and he 
felt reasonably sure Bob would make it go — it would 
give him $10,000 interest on the $100,000; and his 
half of the cotton seed would be worth at least 
$10,000 more. Twenty thousand returns against 
nothing was worth some risk. 

“Besides,” added Bob, “the lease itself, if cotton 
goes up, will be worth fifty thousand next year.” 

“That’s what Reedy Jenkins said,” remarked 
the old gentleman, dryly. “Just left here an hour 
ago — wanted to borrow money to pay the rent this 
year and let the land lie idle.” 

Bob’s heart beat uneasily. “Did you lend it to 
him?” 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 153 

“No!” The old man almost spat the word out. 
“He owes me too much already.” 

For two minutes, three, four, Jim Crill smoked 
and Bob waited, counting the thump of his heart- 
beats in his temple. 

“I’ll let you have the hundred thousand,” he 
said directly. “I’ve watched you; I know an honest 
man when I see one.” 

Bob’s spirits went up like a rocket; but his mind 
quickly veered round to Reedy Jenkins. 

“This will make Reedy Jenkins about the maddest 
man in America,” he remarked. He knew now that 
Reedy would fight him to the bitterest end. 

Jim Crill grinned. “So’ll Evy be mad. You 
fight Reedy, and I’ll — run.” 


CHAPTER XIX 


I MOGENE CHANDLER was washing the break- 
fast dishes out under the canopy of arrow-weed 
roof, where they ate summer and winter. The 
job was quickly done, for the breakfast service was 
very abbreviated. She took a broad-brimmed straw 
hat from a nail on the corner post, and swinging it 
in her hand, for the sun was yet scarcely over the 
rim of the Red Buttes far to the east, went out across 
the field to where her father was already at work. 

March is the middle of spring in the Imperial 
Valley and already the grass grew thick beside the 
water ditches, and leaves were full grown on the 
cottonwood trees. The sunlight, soft through the 
dewy early morning, filled the whole valley with a 
yellow radiance. And out along the water course 
a meadowlark sang. 

The girl threw up her arm swinging the hat 
over her head. She wanted to shout. She felt 
the sweeping surge of spring, the call of the wind, 
154 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


155 


the glow of the sunlight, the boundless freedom of 
the desert. She had never felt so abounding in 
exuberant hope. It had been hard work to hold on 
to this lease, a fight for bread at times. But wealth 
was here in this soil and in this sun. And more than 
wealth. There was health and liberty in it. No 
heckling social restrictions, no vapid idle piffle at 
dull teas; no lugubrious pretence of burdensome 
duties. Here one slept and ate and worked and 
watched the changing light, and breathed the desert 
air and lived. It was a good world. 

The girl stopped and crumbled some of the newly 
plowed earth under the toe of a trim shoe. How 
queer that after all these hundreds and thousands 
of years the stored chemicals of this land should be 
released, and turned by those streams of water into 
streams of wealth — fleecy cotton, luscious fruit and 
melons, food and clothes. And what nice people 
lived out here. The Chinamen who worked in the 
field, quaint and friendly and faithful. Even the 
Mexicans with their less industrious and more 
tricky habits were warm hearted and courteous. 
That serenading Madrigal was very interesting — 
and handsome. He had fire in him; perhaps danger- 


156 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


ous fire, but what a contrast to the vapid white- 
collared clerks or professors in the prim little eastern 
town she had known. 

Of course Bob Rogeen did not like him. Imogene 
instinctively put up her hand and brushed the 
wind-blown hair from her forehead, and smiled. 
Bob was jealous. 

But what a man Rogeen was! She had believed 
there were such men so unobtrusively generous and 
chivalrous. But no one she had ever known before 
was quite like Bob Rogeen. She remembered the 
black hair that clustered thickly over his temples, 
and the whimsical twist of his mouth, and the 
reticent but unafraid brown eyes. 

She had thought many, many times of Rogeen, 
and always it seemed that he filled in just what was 
wanting in this desert — warmth of human fellow- 
ship. Always she thought of him just north over 
there — out of sight but very near. True he came 
very rarely. She wrinkled her forehead and rubbed 
the end of her nose with a forefinger. Why was 
that? Why didn’t he come oftener? Wasn’t she 
interesting? Didn’t he approve of her? 

A reassuring warmth came up to her face and neck. 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 157 

Yes, she believed he did. His eyes looked it when 
he thought she was not noticing. 

She reached down and picked up a stick and threw 
it with a quick, impulsive gesture into the water and 
watched it float on down the ditch. Yes, she was 
pretty sure Rogeen liked her — but how much ? Oh, 
well — she took a dozen girlish skips along the path, 
her hair flying about her face, and her heart dancing 
with the early sun on the green fields before her 
and the brown desert beyond — oh, well, time would 
tell. 

“Daddy,” she had come up to where the little bald- 
headed man was plowing — throwing up the ridges, 
“don’t you like spring?” 

The ex-professor stopped the team, looked at her 
through his glasses, then glanced around the field 
at the grass and weeds and early plants that were up. 

“I believe,” he said, mildly, “that we are approach- 
ing the vernal equinox. But I had not observed 
before the gradual unfoldment of vegetation which 
we have come to associate in our minds with spring.” 

“Oh, daddy, daddy,” she laughed deliciously, and 
leaned over the handle of the plow and pulled his 
ear. “You funny, funny man. Why, it’s spring, 


158 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


it’s spring! Don’t you feel it in your bones? Don’t 
you love the whole world and everybody?” 

Professor Chandler seriously contemplated the sky- 
line, where the sunlight showed red on the distant 
buttes. “I should say, daughter, that it does give 
one a feeling of kinship with nature. I fancy the 
early Greeks felt it.” 

“I fancy they did,” said Imogene, “especially if 
they were in love.” 

“In love?” The professor brought his spectacles 
around to his daughter questioningly. 

“With everything,” she said, laughing. “Daddy, 
I’m awfully glad we are back to the soil — instead 
of back to the Greeks.” 

“I am not discontent with our environment.” 
And the little professor plowed on. She smiled 
maternally at his back. And then two swift tears 
sprang to her eyes. Tender tears. 

“Dear old daddy. It has been good for him. 
He would have dried up and blown away in that 
little old college.” 

Returning to the shack she was still bareheaded. 
She loved the feel of the sun, and the few freckles 
it brought only added a piquancy to her face. 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


159 


“I wonder if he” — she meant Rogeen — “will 
make it go this year. I hope he has a good crop. 
It makes one feel that maybe after all things are 
as they ought to be when a man like he succeeds. 
Wonder what his plans are?” 

Then as she sat down in the shade and began a 
little very necessary mending: 

“I do wish he’d come over — and tell me some more 
about cotton crops — and himself.” 


CHAPTER XX 


I T IS a good thing the wind does not blow from 
the same direction all the time. Things would 
never grow straight if it did. And if one emotion 
persists too long the human mind becomes even 
worse twisted than a tree. For that reason, if we 
are normal, buoyance and depression, ecstasy and 
pain follow each other as regularly as ripples on 
a stream. It is good they do, but it is hard to 
believe it when we are down in the trough of the 
wave. 

As Bob started away with the promise of Jim 
Crill to lend him the money for the Red Butte Ranch, 
his blood was pumping faster than the running engine 
of his car. But directly enthusiasm began to slow 
down. 

Suppose he lost — what an appalling debt for a 
man working at a hundred and fifty a month! It 
never figured in Bob’s calculation to settle his debts 
in red ink. And there were chances to lose. 


160 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 161 

The lawyer was waiting for him at the hotel when 
he returned. 

“I saw Jenkins,” he reported. “Says they paid 
$20,000 for the Red Butte lease last spring. Half 
of it for bonus on the lease, and half for the equip- 
ment. He claims the mules and equipment are easily 
worth $10,000; and he offers to sell lease and all for 
that, but won’t consider a dollar less. I heard on 
the street this evening that a Chinaman had offered 
them $7,500. I have an option on it until eleven 
o’clock in the morning at $10,000.” 

“Thanks, T. J.” Bob was figuring in his mind 
the basis of this price. “I’ll let you know before 
that time.” He went up to his room to think it out. 
He could hardly see any chance for loss, yet of course 
there was. If this was such a sure thing, why had 
not some of the more experienced cotton growers 
in the valley jumped at it? But Bob dismissed 
that line of reasoning with a positive jerk of his head. 
That was a weak man’s reason — the excuse of fail- 
ures, sheep philosophy. Every day of the year 
some new man came into a community and picked 
up a profitable opportunity that other people had 
stumbled over for years. 


162 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


The lease was certainly a bargain; the land was 
in excellent condition, and there would be no diffi- 
culty about labour with plenty of Chinese and Mexi- 
cans. The price of cotton could scarcely go lower. 
Bob had no fear of that. Then what were the dan- 
gers? The chance of a water shortage was remote. 
There had been little trouble about water. Of course 
bad farming could spoil a crop; but Lou Wing was 
an expert cotton grower, and you could trust a China- 
man’s vigilance. With Lou as a partner he could be 
sure the crop would receive proper attention. 

“It seems good!” Bob walked out of his room 
on to the balcony that ran the length of the hotel 
and stood overlooking the twinkling lights of the 
town. Calexico was getting to be quite a little city, 
and the string of lights were flung out for half a mile 
to the east and north. Across the line the high-arched 
sign of the Red Owl already winked alluringly. 

He looked at his watch. It was only a quarter 
past eight. He turned back to his room, took his 
violin from the battered trunk, went to the garage, 
and in fifteen minutes was chugging south between 
the rows of cottonwood and willows that stood 
dim guardians in the night against the desert. 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 163 

Imogene Chandler heard the machine coming. 
She put on her new spring coat and came out into 
the yard. The night was a little cool, and that new 
coat was the first article of wearing apparel she had 
bought for herself in three years. 

“I’m glad you brought your fiddle again,” she 
said as Bob came into the yard. She was bare- 
headed, and her hair showed loose and wavy in the 
starlight. “I’ve felt rather lilty all day.” She 
snapped her fingers and danced round in a circle. 
“Just a little hippety-hoppety,” she laughed, drop- 
ping down upon the bench. “Sit down and play to 
us — me and this wonderful night.” 

“I want to talk first.” He laid the fiddle across his 
knees. In spite of the spell of the desert, figures 
were still running through his head. 

“How like a man!” she said, mockingly. “And 
is it about yourself?” 

“Of course,” he replied, soberly. “You don’t 
think I’d waste gasolene to come down here to talk 
about any other man, do you?” 

“Before you begin on that absorbing subject,” 
she bantered, “tell me, will our cotton now sell for 
enough to pay Mr. Crill that note?” 


164 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 

“Yes, but you are not going to sell it. He has 
extended the note another six months. Cotton is 
going up this fall.” 

“Isn’t that great!” she exclaimed. “Here we 
have money enough for another crop, and can specu- 
late on last year’s cotton by holding for higher prices. 
Why, man, if it should go to ten cents we’d clear 
$3,000 on that cotton above what we already have.” 

“Yes, and if it goes to twelve, you’ll have $4,500 
to the good.” 

He sat still for a moment, gripping the neck of 
his fiddle with his fingers as though choking it into 
waiting. 

“Well?” she prompted. 

“I’ve got a chance for something big.” He got 
up and walked, holding the fiddle by the neck, swing- 
ing it back and forth. “If I put it through, it will 
be a fortune; but if I fail I’ll be in debt world without 
end — mortgaged all the rest of my life!” 

Walking back and forth before her in the starlight 
he told Imogene Chandler of the big opportunity — 
of the rare combination of circumstances which made 
it possible for him, without property or backing, to 
borrow one hundred thousand dollars for a crop; 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 165 

and marshalled his reasons for belief in its success. 
“The water might fail,” she suggested, when he had 
finished and sat down again with the fiddle across 
his knee. 

“Yes, it might,” he admitted. 

“The Chinamen might get into trouble among 
themselves or with the Mexicans and leave you at 
a critical time.” 

“Possibly.” 

“The duty might be raised on cotton,” she added. 

“Yes,” he confessed. 

“But,” she continued, “there is one thing much 
more likely than any of these — a thing fairly certain. 
Reedy Jenkins will fight you in every way he can 
invent. First he’ll fight to get your money; and 
then he’ll fight you just for hate.” 

“I have thought of that,” Bob again got up, 
moved by the agitation of doubt. If it were his own 
money to be risked he would not hesitate a moment 
— but one hundred thousand dollars of another man’s 
money and his own reputation! 

“For these reasons,” continued Imogene Chandler, 
“I advise you to go into it — and you'll win. 

“Now play to me.” 


CHAPTER XXI 


I MOGENE CHANDLER had spoken most con- 
fidently to Bob of his success. But after he was 
gone she began to be pestered by uneasy doubts 
— which is the way of a woman. 

She and her father had been compelled to operate 
on small capital. They had figured, or rather Imo- 
gene had, dollar at a time. This new venture of 
Rogeen’s rather appalled her. A hundred thousand 
of borrowed money! It was almost unthinkable. 
Anywhere else but in this land of surprises such a 
proposition would seem entirely fantastic. 

With so much involved any disastrous turn would 
leave him hopelessly in debt. And besides — her 
thoughts took a more uneasy turn — she felt it was 
going to put him in danger. Reedy Jenkins and his 
Mexican associates would be very bitter over Bob’s 
getting the Red Butte — and they might do anything. 

The next evening, when Noah Ezekiel came over, 
Imogene had not gone to her shack. 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 167 

“Sit down, Noah,” she said, “I want to talk to 
you.” 

“That’s what my maw used to say when I’d been 
swimmin’ on Sunday,” observed the hill billy as he 
let his lank form down on the bench. 

Imogene laughed. “Well, I’m not going to scold 
you for breaking the Sabbath or getting your feet 
wet, or forgetting to shut the gate. What I want, 
Noah, is to get your opinion.” 

“It’s funny about opinions,” remarked Noah im- 
personally to the stars. “Somebody is always 
gettin’ your opinion just to see how big a fool you 
are, and how smart they are.” 

“Noah Ezekiel Foster,” the girl spoke reprovingly. 
“You know better than that. You know I want 
your opinion because I think you know more about 
cotton than I do.” 

“All right,” said Noah, meekly. “Lead on. I got 
more opinions in my head than Ben Davis’ sheep 
used to have cockle burs in their wool.” 

“What do you think of the Red Butte Ranch?” 

“It’s a blamed fine ranch.” 

“Do you think Mr. Rogeen will make money on 
it?” She tried to sound disinterested. 


168 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“That reminds me,” replied Noah, “of Sam Scott. 
Sam went to Dixion and started a pool hall under 
Ike Golberg’s clothing store. After Sam got it all 
fixed up with nice green -topped tables and white 
balls, and places to spit between shots, he got me 
down there to look it over. 

“‘How does she look?’ says Sam. 

“‘She looks all right,’ I said. 

‘“I’m going to get rich,’ declares Sam. 

“‘That all depends’ I says, ‘on one thing.’ 

“‘What’s that?’ says Sam. 

“‘On whuther there is more money comes down 
them stairs than goes up.’” 

Noah twisted his shoulders and again looked up 
impersonally at the stars. 

“You see makin’ money is mighty simple. All 
you got to do is take in more than you pay out. 
But the dickens of it is, losin’ it is just as simple — 
and a durned sight easier.” 

Imogene was smiling into the dusk, but her 
thoughts were on serious matters. 

“Well, which do you think Mr. Rogeen will do?” 

Noah twisted his shoulders again, and shuffled his 
feet on the ground. 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


169 


“I always hate to give a plumb out opinion — 
because it nearly always ruins your reputation as a 
prophet. But Bob ain’t nobody’s fool. And he’s 
white from his heels to his eyeballs — everything 
except his liver.” 

Imogene laughed, but felt a swelling in the throat. 
That tribute from the hill bill meant more than the 
verdict of a court. 

“The only trouble is,” Noah was speaking a little 
uneasily himself, “Reedy Jenkins is a skunk and 
he’s got some pizen rats gnawing for him. There 
ain’t nothin’ they won’t do — except what they are 
afraid to. Bob’s got ’em so they don’t tie their 
goats around his shack any more. But they are 
going to do him dirt, sure as a tadpole makes a 
toad. 

“Reedy Jenkins has got hold of a lot of money 
somewhere again; and he’s set out to bush Bob, and 
get away with the pile. I don’t know just how he’s 
aimin’ to do it; but Reedy don’t never have any re- 
grets over what happens to the other fellow if it 
makes money for him.” 

The hill billy’s words made Imogene more uneasy 
than before. And yet looking at the lank, droll 


170 THE DESERT FIDDLER 

fellow sitting there in the starlight, she again smiled, 
and sighed. 

“Well, I’m mighty glad Mr. Rogeen has you for a 
friend,” she said aloud. 

“A friend,” observed Noah, “is sorter like a gun — 
expensive in town but comfortin’ in the country. 

“But really I ain’t no good, Miss Chandler. As I 
used to say to my dad, ‘if the Lord made me, he 
must have done it sort of absent mindedly, for he 
ain’t never found no place for me.’” 

Imogene arose. She knew this big-hearted, rough 
hill billy must be tired. She went over and laid her 
hand lightly on his shoulder and said with a solemn 
tightening of the throat — “Noah, you are the salt 
of the earth — and I’d rather have you for a friend 
than a diamond king.” 

Noah arose, emotion always made him uncom- 
fortable, and shuffled off to his tent without a 
word. 

But he turned at the entrance to the tent, and 
looked back. The girl sat quite still, her face 
turned up toward the stars. 

“Well,” said Noah to himself, “she’s got me all 
right.” 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


171 


On the fourteenth of June Bob Rogeen and Noah 
Ezekiel Foster rode through the Red Butte Ranch. 

The fields lay before them checkered off into 
squares by the irrigation ditches, level as a table. 
The long rows of cotton were five to ten inches high, 
and of a dark green colour. The stand on most of 
the fields was almost perfect. One Chinaman with a 
span of mules cultivated fifty acres. 

“Lou Wing is a great farmer,” continued Bob, 
enthusiastically. “He is doing the work for 45 
per cent, of the crop. I pay the water and the rent; 
and of course I have to advance him the money 
to feed and pay his hands. He has twenty partners 
with a separate camp for each; and each partner 
has four Chinamen working for him. That is system, 
Noah. It certainly looks like riches, doesn’t it?” 

“All flesh is grass,” Noah sighed lugubriously, 
“except some that’s weeds.” 

“Cotton is going up every day,” said Bob. “It 
was nine cents and a fraction yesterday.” 

“That means,” remarked Noah Ezekiel, “Reedy 
Jenkins could sell them eight thousand bales he’s got 
stacked up on this side and pay all his debts and have 
twenty thousand over.” 


172 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“But Reedy is not paying his debts.” 

“Not yet,” said Noah; “he is borrowin’ more 
money.” 

“Is that so?” Bob was sharply interested. He 
had not feared Reedy much while he was out of 
funds. “When did you hear that?” 

“Saturday night,” replied Noah. “You can 
gather a whole lot more information round the Red 
Owl than you can moss.” 

“I wonder what he is going to do with it?” Bob’s 
mind was still on Reedy Jenkins. 

“He’s done done with it,” answered Noah. “ He’s 
bought the Dillenbeck irrigation system.” 

Instantly all exuberant desire to shout went from 
Bob’s throat and a chill ran along his veins. In a 
twinkling the heat of the friendly sun upon those 
wide green fields with their fingered network of a 
hundred water ditches became a threat and a menace. 
After all, .by what a narrow thread does security 
hang! 

Bob walked as one on a precipice during the follow- 
ing weeks. Never was a man more torn between 
hope and fear. On the one hand, the cotton grew 
amazingly. Fed by the nourishment stored in that 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


173 


soil which had lain dormant for thousands of years, 
watered by the full sluices from the Colorado River 
and warmed like a hotbed by the floods of sunshine 
day after day, the stalks climbed and climbed and 
branched until they looked more like green bushes 
than frail plants. Bob rode the fields all day long, 
even when the thermometer crept up to 127 in the 
shade, and a skillet left in the sun would fry bacon 
and eggs perfectly done in seven minutes. Often 
he continued to ride until far into the night, watch- 
ing the chopping of the weeds, watching the men in 
the fields, and most of all watching the watering. 
Yes, the crop was advancing with a promise almost 
staggering in its richness. It looked now as though 
some of these fields would go to a bale and a half an 
acre. And slowly but surely the price of cotton had 
climbed since March, a quarter of a cent one day, 
a half the next, a jump of a whole cent one Friday; 
and now on the second day of August it touched 10.37. 
With a bale to the acre at that price Bob could add 
$30,000 to his estimated expense and still clear a 
hundred thousand dollars on this crop. When he 
thought of it as he rode along the water ditches in 
the early evening, he grew fairly dizzy with hope. 


174 THE DESERT FIDDLER 

But then on the other side: the unformed menace 
— Reedy Jenkins owned the water system! 

The fear had taken tangible shape when he got his 
water bill for June. But there was no raise in price. 
Again yesterday, the bill for July came, and still no 
raise in price. 

It was ten o’clock that night when he got into 
Calexico and went to the hotel. 

As the clerk gave him the key to his room, he also 
handed him a letter, saying: 

“A special delivery that came for you an hour 
ago; I signed for it.” 

Bob’s fingers shook slightly as he took it. Glanc- 
ing swiftly at the corner of the envelope he read: 


DILLENBECK WATER CO. 


CHAPTER XXII 


R EEDY JENKINS, the first night of August, 
sat in his office, the windows open, the door 
^ open, the neck of his soft shirt open, and his 
low shoes kicked off. But his plump, pink face was 
freshly shaven and massaged and he wore two-dollar 
silk socks. Even in dishabille Reedy had an air of 
ready money. 

There had been dark days last fall when he had 
been so closely cornered by his creditors that it took 
many a writhe and a wriggle to get through. No- 
body but himself, unless it was the dour Tom 
Barton, knew how overwhelmingly he was bank- 
rupt. 

But Reedy had kept up an affable front to all 
his creditors and a ready explanation. “We are all 
broke, everybody in same boat. Why sweat over 
it? Of course I’ve got some cotton across the line; 
we’ll just leave it there and save the duty until 
it’ll sell. Then I’ll pay out.” 

175 


176 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


He kept up this reassurance until cotton began to 
sell, and then he postponed: 

“Wait; we are all easier now. Got enough so I 
can cash in any day and have plenty to pay all bills. 
But just wait until it goes a little higher.” 

And when it had gone to eight cents, eight and a 
half, and at last nine, his creditors had ceased to 
worry him. Now that Reedy could sell out any day 
and liquidate, and still be worth a hundred thou- 
sand or more, there was no hurry to collect. No- 
body wants to push a man who can pay his debts 
any hour. Some of them even began to lend him 
more money. He had borrowed $25,000 as a first 
payment on the $200,000 for the Dillenbeck water 
system. 

To-night Reedy had a list of figures before him 
again. Cotton had touched 9.76 to-day. Things 
were coming to a head. It was time to act. 

Reedy had one set of figures in which 8,000 bales 
were multiplied by fifty and a fraction. It added 
$474,000. There was a column of smaller sums, 
the largest of which was. Revenue $28,000. These 
smaller sums were totalled and subtracted from 
$474,000, leaving $365,000 — a sum over which Reedy 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


177 


moistened his lips. Then he multiplied 15,000 
acres by something and set that sum also under the 
$365,000 and added again. The total made him roll 
his pencil between his two plump hands. 

Madrigal, the Mexican Jew, entered with a jaunty 
gesture, and took a chair and lighted a cigarette. 

“When did you get back from Guaymas?” 
Reedy leaned back, lighted a match on the bottom 
of his chair and touched it to a plump cigar. 

“Yesterday, Senor Reedy.” There was always a 
mixture of aggressiveness and mocking freshness in 
Madrigal’s tone and air. 

‘ ‘ See B ondeberg ? ’ ’ 

The Mexican nodded. 

“Everything all right?” 

“Si, si Madrigal sometimes was American and 
sometimes Mexican. 

“I’ve had a dickens of a time getting trucks,” 
said Reedy, speaking in a low, casual tone. “But 
I got ’em — twenty. Be unloaded to-morrow or the 
next day. I’ve arranged to take care of the duty. 
They are to be sold, you understand, with an actual 
bill of sale to each of the twenty Mexican chauffeurs 
you have employed.” 


178 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


Madrigal nodded lightly as though all of this was 
primer work for him. 

“Have everything ready by the tenth. I think 
I can close up this water deal by that time.” 

As the Mexican left, Reedy reached for his tele- 
phone and called El Centro. 

“Mrs. Barnett?” Soft oiliness oozed from his 
voice. “This is Reedy. What are you doing this 
evening? Nothing? How would you like a little 
spin out to the foot of the mountains to get a cool 
breath and watch the moon rise? — All right. I’ll be 
along in about thirty minutes. By, by.” The 
words sounded almost like kisses. 

“Mrs. Barnett” — Reedy slowed down the machine 
as they drove off across the desert toward the foot- 
hills — “I owe everything to you.” 

The widow, all in white now — very light, cool 
white — felt a little shivery thrill of pride go over her. 
She half simpered and tried to sound deprecating. 

“Oh, you merely flatter me.” She was rolling a 
small dainty handkerchief in her palms. 

“No, indeed!” responded Reedy, roundly. “No 
one can estimate the influence of a good woman on a 
man’s life.” 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


179 


“Fm so glad” — the shivery thrill got to her throat 
— “if I’ve really helped you — Reedy.” It was the 
first time she had used his given name, although he 
had often urged it. 

“You know,” he continued, “in spite of the great 
opportunities for wealth here, I do not believe that 
I could have endured this valley if it had not been 
for you. You can’t imagine what it means to a man, 
after the disagreeable hurly-burly of the day’s 
business, to know there is a pure, sweet, womanly 
woman waiting for him on the porch.” 

Mrs. Barnett gulped, filled with emotion. “I do 
believe,” she almost gushed, “men like the shy, 
womanly woman who keeps her place best after all.” 

“They certainly do!” 

“I don’t see,” mused Mrs. Barnett, “how a man 
really could care for a woman who becomes so — so — 
well, rough and sunburned, and coarsened by sordid 
work — like that Chandler woman, for instance. I 
mean, I don’t see how any good man could care for 
that sort.” 

“Nor I,” said Reedy, emphatically. He steered 
with one hand, and got both of her hands in the other. 

“This year is going to be a great one for me. 


180 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


Cotton is already over ten cents. I’ll need only 
$25,000 more, and then I can clean up a fortune for 
all of us.” 

Mrs. Barnett, still thrilling to that hand pressure, 
moved a little uneasily. 

“Uncle Jim has been right hard to manage for the 
last two times. He was real ugly about that last 
$40,000. I had to remind him how much my poor 
mother did for him and how little he had done for 
us before he would listen to me.” 

No wonder the widow quaked within her at the 
honour of being elected to do it all over again. It 
was not because she hesitated to attempt it for so 
noble a man; but for the moment she was desperate 
for a way to go at it. She had used in the last effort 
every “womanly” device known to conservative 
tradition for separating a man from his money. 
But she hesitated only a moment. A watery heart 
and a dry eye never won a fat loan. Undoubtedly 
her womanly intuition — or Providence — would show 
her a way. 

“I’ll do my best, Mr. Jenkins” — she lapsed into 
the formal again — “to get the loan for you. But 
Uncle is getting right obstinate.” 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


181 


“That’s all right, little girl,” he patted her hands. 
“I trust you to do it, you could move the heart of 
Gibraltar. And as I’ve promised you all the time, 
when I close up these deals I’m going to give you 
personally $25,000 of the profits in appreciation of 
your assistance. And that is not all” — he squeezed 
both the widow’s hands a moment, then released 
them as if by terrific resolution — “but more of that 
later. We must close up this prosaic business first.” 

The next morning at ten o’clock Jim Crill stamped 
up the outside stairway, stamped through the open 
door and threw a check for $25,000 on Reedy’s desk. 

“That’s the last,” the old gentleman snapped 
with finality. “And I want to begin to see some 
payments mighty quick.” 

Reedy smiled as the old gentleman stamped back 
down the stairs, proud of his own ability as a 
“worker.” And he was not without admiration for 
Mrs. Barnett’s ability in that line. It would be in- 
teresting to know how she had done it so quickly. 

“If the old man knew,” Reedy picked up the check 
and grinned at the crabbed signature, “what this 
is going for, he’d drop dead with apoplexy at the 
foot of the stairs.” 


182 THE DESERT FIDDLER 

He reached for the telephone and called the freight 
agent: 

‘‘Are those motor trucks in yet? Good! We’ll 
have them unloaded at once.” 

There are two ways to make a lot of money per- 
fectly honestly: One is to produce much at a time 
when the product legitimately has such a high value 
that it shows a good profit. The other is to plan, in- 
vent, or organize so as to help a great many men save 
a little more, or earn a little more, and share the little 
with each of the many benefited. And there are two 
ways to get money wrongfully: One is by criminal 
dishonesty — taking under some of the multiple 
forms of theft what does not at all belong to one. The 
other is by moral dishonesty — forcing or aggravating 
acute needs, and taking an unfair advantage of them, 
blackmailing a man by his critical wants. 

Reedy Jenkins had merely intended to be the 
latter. He had not planned to produce anything, 
nor yet to help other men produce, but to farm other 
men’s needs — get hold of something so necessary 
for their success that it would force tribute from 
them. He planned to hold a hammer over the 
weakest link in others’ financial deals and threaten 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 183 

to break it unless they paid him double for the 
hammer. 

Reedy indorsed Jim Crill’s check, and stuck it in 
his vest pocket. He liked to go into a bank and 
carelessly pull $25,000 checks out of his vest pocket. 
Then he took from a drawer twenty letters already 
typed, signed them, and put them into envelopes ad- 
dressed to the ranchers who bought water of the 
Dillenbeck Water Co. 

“Now” — Reedy moistened his lips and nodded 
his head — “we are all set.” 


CHAPTER XXIII 


B OB tore the letter open with one rip, and read it 
with his back to the desk: 

Dear Sir: 

We regret to say that dredging and other immediate repairs 
on our canal make a rather heavy assessment imperative. The 
work must be done at once, and the company’s funds are entirely 
exhausted. Your assessment is $10 an acre; and this must be 
paid before we can serve you with any more water. 

Very truly, 

Dillenbeck Water Co., 
Per R. Jenkins, Pres. & Mgr. 

Ten dollars an acre! Fifty thousand dollars! 
Bob walked slowly out of the hotel. There was no 
use to go up to his room. No sleep to-night. 

Jenkins’ plot was clear now. He had merely 
been waiting for the most critical time. The next 
two waterings were the most vital of the whole sea- 
son. The little squares that form the boll were 
taking shape. If the cotton did not get water at 
this time the bolls would fall off instead of setting. 

184 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


185 


Bob walked down the street, on through to the 
Mexican section of town, thinking. He must do 
something, but what? 

It was a sweltering night and people were mostly 
outdoors. Under the vines in front of a small 
Mexican house a man played a guitar and a woman 
hummed an accompaniment. Across the street a 
little Holiness Mission was holding prayer meeting, 
and through the open windows an organ and twenty 
voices wailed out a religious tune. 

Bob turned and walked back rapidly, and crossed 
the Mexican line. At the Red Owl he might hear 
something. 

It was so hot that even the gamblers were listless 
to-night. The only stir of excitement was round one 
roulette wheel. Bob started toward the group, and 
saw the centre of it was Reedy Jenkins with his hat 
tipped back, shirt open at the throat, sleeves rolled 
to elbows, playing stacks of silver dollars on the 
“thirty.” 

Bob leaned against one of the idle tables and talked 
with the game keeper, a pleasant, friendly young chap. 

“Wonder what the Mexicans are going to do with 
so many motor trucks? ” the gamester asked casually. 


186 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“Motor trucks?” Bob repeated. 

“Yes, they unloaded a whole string of them over 
here to-day. One of the boys said he counted 
twenty.” 

As Bob left the gambling hall Reedy was still 
playing the roulette wheel at twenty dollars a throw. 

Rogeen got his car and started south. He would 
see for himself if there was any basis for Jenkins’ 
claim that immediate work must be done on the 
water system. It was late and there were no lights 
at any of the little ranch shacks over the fields. 

Chandler’s place was dark like the rest. They 
were sleeping. Their notice would not come until 
to-morrow or next day. He would not wake them. 
Anyway to-night he had forgotten his fiddle, but 
he grimly remembered his gun. 

He drove through the Red Butte Ranch without 
stopping. He could scarcely bear even to look to 
the right or left at those long rich rows of dark green 
cotton. 

Turning off the main road south toward the Dillen- 
beck canal, something unusual stirred in Bob’s 
consciousness. At first he could not think what was 
the matter; but directly he got it — the car was run- 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


187 


ning differently. This road across a patch of the 
desert was usually so bumpy one had to hold himself 
down. To-night the car ran smoothly. The road 
had been worked — was being worked now — for a 
quarter of a mile ahead he heard an engine and made 
out some sort of road-dragging outfit. 

The simplest way in the world to make a road 
across a sandy desert, or to work one that has been 
used, is to take two telephone poles, fasten them the 
same distance apart as automobile wheels, hitch 
on an engine, and drag them lengthwise along the 
road. This not only grinds down the uneven bumps 
but packs the sand into a smooth, firm bed for the 
machine’s wheels. 

That was what they were doing here. Bob stayed 
back and watched. He did not want to overtake 
them. The road-breaking outfit crossed the canal 
directly and headed south by east off into the desert. 
Bob stopped his machine on the plank bridge, and 
watched them pull away into the night. Then he 
gave a long, speculative whistle. 

“I wonder,” he said, “what philanthropist is 
abroad in the land at one o’clock in the morning?” 

Rogeen left his machine and followed on foot along 


188 THE DESERT FIDDLER 

the bank of the canal for two miles. The water was 
flowing freely. There was no sign of immediate 
need for dredging. Some of the small ranches were 
getting water to-night. He was glad of that. The 
Red Butte had finished watering its five-thousand- 
acre crop a week ago. It would be three days before 
they would need to begin again. 

He went back to his machine and drove clear up 
to the intake from the Valley Irrigation Company’s 
canal. The water was running smoothly all the 
way. The ditches seemed open, and in fair shape. 
Some work was needed of course every day; but there 
was no call for any quick, expensive repairs. 

No, Jenkins’ call for money was purely for himself 
and not the water system. The whole thing was 
robbery. But how could it be prevented? In- 
junctions by American courts did not extend over 
here, and Reedy undoubtedly had an understanding 
with the Mexican authorities. 

There was nothing for it, thought Bob, but to 
choose one of two evils: Be robbed of $50,000, or 
lose five thousand acres of cotton. He set his teeth 
and started the little car plugging back across the 
sand toward the American line. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


A LITTLE after daylight Bob was in El 
Centro. Jim Crill, always an early riser, 
was on the porch reading the morning paper. 
“Come and have breakfast with me,” Bob called 
from the machine. “Got some things to talk over.” 

He handed Crill the letter from the water company. 
Not a muscle in the old gentleman’s face changed 
as he read, but two spots of red showed at the points 
of his sharp cheekbones. 

“If it was your own money in that crop, what 
would you do?” asked Jim Crill, shortly. 

“I’d fight him to hell and back.” Bob’s eyes 
smoldered. 

“Then fight him to hell and back,” said the old 
man, shortly. “And if you don’t get back, I’ll put 
up a tombstone for you. 

“I’ve believed all along,” said Jim Crill, “that 
Reedy Jenkins is a rascal. But,” he lifted his left 
eyebrow significantly, “womenfolks don’t always 
189 


190 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


see things as we do. Anyway, my trust was in 
cotton — it is honest — and sooner or later I’ll get 
his cotton. He’s got to bring it across the line to 
sell it. 

“I’ve taken up all the other liens on that cotton,” 
Crill continued, “so there’ll be no conflicting claims. 
I’ve got $215,000 against those eight thousand bales.” 

He took a bill book from his hip pocket, and re- 
moved some papers. 

“I was coming over to see you this morning. 
Been called away. Trouble in our Texas oil field. 
Main gusher stopped. May be a pauper instead of 
a millionaire. Would have got out of this damned 
heat before now if I hadn’t wanted to keep an eye 
on Jenkins. 

“Now I’m going to turn these bills over to you 
for collection. Get $215,000 with 10 per cent, in- 
terest, and half his cotton seed.” 

Bob’s eyes were straight ahead on the road as he 
drove back to Calexico; his hands held the wheel 
with a steady grip, but his mind was neither on the 
road nor on the machine. 

“Well,” he smiled to himself, grimly, “at any 
rate, I’m accumulating a good deal of business 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 191 

to transact with Reedy Jenkins. I suppose the 
first move is a personal interview with him.” 

Bob stopped the machine in the side street and 
went up the outside stairway of the red brick build- 
ing, with purpose in his steps. But the door of the 
office was closed, a notice tacked on it. Bob stepped 
forward and read it eagerly: 

“Mr. Jenkins’ office is temporarily removed to the 
main building of the Mexican Cotton Ginning Co.” 

“And so,” said Bob as he went down the stairs, 
“Reedy has moved across the line.” That was 
puzzling, and not at all reassuring. 

Rogeen did not go to the cotton gin to see Reedy. 
He wanted first to find out what the move meant. 
For two days he was on the road eighteen hours a 
day, most of the time on the Mexican side, gathering 
up the threads of Jenkins’ plot. The other ranchers 
by this time had all received their notices, and there 
was murder in some of their eyes. But most of them 
were Americans, the rest Chinamen, and neither 
wanted any trouble on that side. 

“Jenkins has a stand-in, damn him,” said Black 


192 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


Ben, one of the ranchers. “I’d like to plug him, 
but I don’t want to get into a Mexican jail.” 

The second evening he met Noah Ezekiel at the 
entrance of the Red Owl. Bob had instructed Noah 
and Lou Wing to continue the work in the cotton 
fields exactly as though nothing impended. 

“I was just lookin’ for you,” said Noah a little 
sheepishly. 

“All right,” responded Bob. “You’ve found me. 
What is on your mind?” 

“Let us go a little apart from these sons of Belial,” 
said Noah, sauntering past the Owl into the 
shadows. 

“I picked up a fellow down by the Red Butte to- 
day,” began Noah, “that had been on one of these 
here walkin’ tours — the kind you take when your 
money gives out. After he’d stuffed himself with 
pottage and Chinese greens, and fried bacon, and 
a few other things round the camp, he got right talka- 
tive. He says they’ve broke a good road through 
the sand straight from Red Butte to the head of the 
Gulf of California. And that there is a little ship 
down there from Guaymas lying round waiting for 
something to happen.” 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


193 


“Noah” — Bob gripped Ezekiel’s arm — “I’ve been 
working on that very theory. Your news clinches it. 
Reedy is never going to take that cotton across 
the American line. He is planning to shoot it down 
across that eighty -five miles of desert to the Gulf on 
motor trucks, ship it to Guay mas, and sell it there to 
an exporter. He is not even going to pay poor old 
Ah Sing for picking it; and as a final get-away stake 
he is trying to hold us up for $150,000 on the water. 
He has moved across the line for safety, and never 
intends to move back.” 

“He won’t need to,” said Noah Ezekiel. “He 
is due to get away with about half a million. But 
what do we care?” Noah shook his head solemnly. 
“As my dad used to say, ‘Virtue is its own reward.’ 
That ought to comfort you, Brother Rogeen, when 
you are working out that $78,000 of debts at forty 
dollars a month.” 


CHAPTER XXV 


E ARLY next morning Bob went to the ex- 
ecutive offices, and waited two hours for 
the arrival of the governor. Rogeen knew 
of course that Madrigal, the Mexican Jew, was en- 
gineering the Mexican end of the conspiracy; but he 
wanted to discover who the Mexican official was from 
whom they were securing protection. 

Bob stated his business briefly, forcibly. He 
was one of the ranchers who got water from the 
Dillenbeck canal. The company was endeavouring 
to rob them. The ranchers wanted protection, and 
wanted water at once. The official was very court- 
eous, solicitous, sympathetic. He would look into it 
immediately. Would Senor Rogeen call again to- 
morrow? 

Senor Rogeen would most certainly call again to- 
morrow. When he left the office he went direct to 
Ah Sing’s ranch. 

“Ah Sing,” said Bob, “I want you to turn over to 

194 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


195 


me your $80,000 claim against Reedy Jenkins for 
picking his eight thousand bales of cotton, and give 
me power of attorney to collect it.” 

“Allee light, I give him.” 

The next morning when the Mexican official came 
down to the office at ten o’clock he assured Bob most 
regretfully that although impetuous and violent 
efforts had been made to right his wrongs, unfor- 
tunately so far they had found no law governing the 
case. The Dillenbeck Company was a private water 
company, owned by American citizens; the Mexican 
officials had no power to fix the rate. 

Bob went direct to the Mexican cotton gin. 

“Jenkins” — Bob sat down on the edge of the 
offered chair, his feet on the floor, his knees bent 
as though ready to spring up — “I need to begin 
watering the Red Butte to-day, but your man tells 
me he has orders to keep the gates shut.” 

Reedy nodded, his plump lips shut tight, an 
amused leer in the tail of his eye. “You got my 
notice, didn’t you? No cash, no water. Either 
ten dollars an acre spot cash or no spot cotton.” 

“Jenkins” — Bob’s fingers were clutching his 
own knees as though holding themselves off the 


196 THE DESERT FIDDLER 

rascal’s throat — “that is the dirtiest steal I ever 
knew.” 

“That is not near what the water is really worth 
to you,” said Reedy, nonchalantly. “It is only 
about 20 per cent, of what your crop will make — if 
it does not burn up.” 

The knots in Bob’s arms flattened out, and his 
tone took on casualness again. 

“Jenkins, I’ve got a couple of little bills against 
you that I’m authorized to collect. One on the 
American side is a trifle of $215,000 which you owe 
Mr. Crill; the other on this side is for $80,000 that 
you owe Ah Sing. Do you wish to take care of 
them now? Or shall I attach your cotton?” 

Reedy’s pink face and wide mouth took on a grin 
that fairly oozed amusement. “Attach my cotton, 
by all means.” 

Bob got up, hesitated a second, sat down again, 
and took out his check book. As his pen scratched 
for a moment, the grin on Reedy’s face changed to 
one of victorious greed. Rogeen tore out the check 
and handed it to Reedy. 

“There is $1,600. Turn water on the Chandler 
ranch. As for mine, you can be damned.” 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 197 

Reedy toyed idly with the check a moment, slowly 
tore it up, and threw it in the wastebasket. 

“I’m sorry, but I can’t get water to the Chandler 
ranch without the rest order it, too. Perhaps” — 
he again took on a leer — “if Miss Chandler should 
come in and see me personally, something might be 
arranged.” 

“Jenkins” — the coolest, most concentrated anger 
of his life was in Bob’s tone — “I know your whole 
plot. You can’t get away with it. You may 
ruin my cotton, probably will, but I’m going to 
smash you and sell the pieces to pay your 
debts.” 

Reedy got to his feet, and flushed hotly. The 
threat had gone home. 

“There are six hundred Mexican soldiers and 
policemen that will answer my call. You won’t 
make a move they don’t see. 

“Don’t bank on any threat about the United 
States Government. Mexicans have been picking 
off Americans whenever they got ready for the last 
three years; and nothing ever happens. They 
aren’t one bit scared of the American Govern- 


ment. 


198 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“Don’t fool yourself, Rogeen; you are outclassed 
this time. I know what I’m doing, and I’m going to 
do it. If you don’t want to rot in a Mexican jail 
or bleach on the sands somewhere, you’ll walk softly 
and stay on the other side.” 


CHAPTER XXVI 


W HEN Bob left the Mexican cotton gin 
after the interview with Reedy Jenkins 
he had the feeling of furious futility which 
many a brave man has felt under similar circum- 
stances. Yonder, two hundred yards away, he could 
see American soldiers patrolling the border; yet so 
little influence and so little fear did that big benign 
government wield over here that he knew that 
scoundrel and his villainous Mexican confederates 
could ruin his fields, throw him in jail and, even as 
Reedy threatened, bleach his bones on the sand, and 
no help come from over there — not in time to save 
him. 

And yet there must be ways. There were other 
Mexican officials than the thieving one that Reedy 
had bribed to protect his movements and robberies. 
There were some fair Mexicans; and there were 
others, even if unfair, on whom the pressure of self- 
interest could surely be brought to bear. 

199 


200 THE DESERT FIDDLER 

It was unfortunate, Bob reflected, that Jim Crill 
had bought up all the debts against Jenkins’ cotton. 
If these debts had been left scattered among the 
banks and stores and implement dealers, there 
would have been some influential cooperation in his 
effort to get action from the Mexican officials. 

Bob went across the line and filed a long telegram 
to the State Department at Washington outlining the 
situation and asking for assistance. Then he caught 
the train for Los Angeles, where he had learned the 
American consul at the nearest Mexican port, whom 
he knew, was on a vacation. 

The consul was very indignant at the treatment 
Rogeen was receiving and promised to investigate. 

“Investigate!” Bob ran his fingers through his 
thick, sweaty hair, and unconsciously gave it a jerk. 
“But, man, I need water right now! It’s the most 
critical time of the whole crop. Every day of delay 
means a loss of ten, fifteen, twenty thousand 
dollars.” 

“I know,” said the consul; “but don’t you see no 
officer can act merely on the word of one man. We 
have to get evidence and forward it to the depart- 
ment. If only I had the authority to act on my own 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 201 

initiative, I could bring them to time in twenty -four 
hours.” 

“If you wired to the department for authority,” 
suggested Bob, “couldn’t you get it?” 

The consul shook his head doubtfully. He really 
was impressed by Bob’s desperate situation. “I’ll 
try it, and I’ll be down to-morrow to see what I can 
do.” 

Bob returned to Calexico with a little hope — not 
much but a little. Anyway, he was anxious to see the 
department’s reply to his own appeal. But it had 
not replied. The Western Union operator was al- 
most insulted that Bob should imagine there was a 
message there for him. 

Bob wrote another appeal, a little longer, and if 
possible more urgent, and fired that into Washington. 

The consul came the following day. He inter- 
viewed the other ranchers and verified Bob’s state- 
ments. He took affidavits, and made up quite a 
bulky report and dispatched it by mail to Washing- 
ton. In the meantime he wired, briefly outlining the 
substance of his letter, and asked for temporary 
authority to take measures that would force the 
Mexican officials to act. 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


Bob was fairly hopeful over this. He waited 
anxiously for twenty-four hours for some answer. 
None came. This was the third day since his cotton 
began to need water. The thermometer went to 
131 at two o’clock. No green plant could survive 
long without water. 

He rode all day enlisting the cooperation of in- 
fluential men in the valley on the American side, and 
got several of them to send wires to Washington. 
Every night when he returned to Calexico he went 
eagerly to the telegraph office; but each time the 
operator emphatically shook his head. Then Bob 
laboured over another long telegram, begging for 
haste; he paid nine dollars and forty cents toll and 
urged that the message be rushed. 

By the fifth day Rogeen was getting desperate. 
He returned to Calexico at seven o’clock, jumped 
out of his car, and hurried into the telegraph 
office. 

A message! A telegram for him at last! He 
had got action. Maybe even yet he could save most 
of his crop. The message was collect — $1.62. He 
dropped two silver dollars on the counter and with- 
out noticing the change tore open the message. It 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 203 

was from the department at Washington and was 
brief : 

Dear Sir : 

If you file your complaints in writing, they will be referred 
to the proper department for consideration. 

R. P. M., Ass't to Sec. of State. 

Then Bob gave up, turned about gloomily, and 
went out to his machine, and started south toward 
the Chandler ranch. 


CHAPTER XXVII 


4S THE sun, like a burnished lid to some 

/% hotter caldron, slid down behind the yellow 
JL J L sandhills that rimmed the desert, Imogene 
Chandler felt as though she must scream. She would 
have made some wild outcry of relief if it had not 
been for her father, who still sat in the doorway of the 
shack, as he had all day, gray and bent like a dusty, 
wilted mullein stalk. 

It had been a terrible day — the hottest of the 
summer. And for a week now the irrigation ditches 
had been dry. To-day the cotton leaves had wilted; 
and the girl had looked away from the fields all 
afternoon. It tortured her to see those rich green 
plants choking for water. 

The sun gone, and a little relief from the heat, she 
began to prepare supper. 

As she stirred flour for biscuits, Imogene was 
blaming herself for ever bringing her father here. 
But it had looked so like the great opportunity to 

204 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


205 


escape from the fetters of dry rot and poverty. So 
near were they to success, with the rising prices this 
crop would make them a small fortune — five thou- 
sand, perhaps seven or eight thousand dollars clear — 
if only it had water. But to see it burn day by day, 
and all because of the greed of Reedy Jenkins! She 
had sent her father with the tribute of sixteen hun- 
dred dollars to Jenkins, but he had refused it. He 
could not turn on the water for so small a ranch. She 
knew he was trying to force Bob Rogeen through her 
to submit to the robbery. 

Imogene and her father were dully eating their 
supper when Bob’s machine stopped at the ranch. 
But the moment the light from the swinging lantern 
over the table fell on his face, she knew it was hope- 
less, and her mind leaped from her own trouble 
to his. 

“It all comes down to this” — they had not dis- 
cussed the fight until the little professor had gone to 
bed — “my backing must mean more to the Mexican 
officials than Reedy Jenkins’. If I could only get 
Washington to give the consul power to act, then we 
could apply pressure. But” — he shrugged his shoul- 


206 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


ders fatalistically and looked moodily up at the 
glittering stars — “ you see how hopeless that is.” 

She gave a jump that almost scared him, and 
grabbed his arm. Her face was so close to his he 
could see the excitement in her eyes even through the 
dusk. 

“I can help; it can be done!” 

She was electrically alive now. “Daddy was a 
classmate of the President’s and was an instructor 
under him before we came West. He thinks a lot of 
daddy, but daddy would never use his friendship 
with the President to get a job. He’s got to use it 
now — for you — for all of us! Write a personal 
telegram to the President — the sort that will get 
immediate action — and I’ll make daddy sign it.” 

Bob was fairly white with excitement, and his hand 
shook as they sat down at the board table under the 
lantern and carefully composed that telegram. This 
was their one last hope, and it must get action. 

“There, that will do it,” Imogene nodded sagely. 
They were sitting side by side, their heads close to- 
gether, studying the final draft of the appeal. The 
night wind blew a strand of her hair against his 
face, and for a moment he forgot the desert, forgot 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 207 

the fight, forgot the telegram, and saw only her. 
Then he shook himself free from the spell. He must 
save the girl and himself before he dared speak. 

Imogene roused up her father, and had him sign 
the message. And an hour later by a combination of 
bribes, threats, and pleadings Bob got a sleepy oper- 
ator to reopen the telegraph office and speed the 
message to Washington. 

At five o’clock the next day the reply came. Bob 
signed for it, a l nd his fingers shook as he tore it open. 

Dear Theo: 

State Department instructing consul by wire to take any action 
necessary to protect American ranchers. 

W. 

By eleven o’clock that night he got a message 
from the consul; and thirty minutes later Bob was 
speeding toward Tia Juana, a hundred and fifty 
miles west, to see the Mexican governor. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


E ARLY next morning Rogeen got an interview 
with the executive of the Mexican province, 
whom he had never met. The governor 
received him most courteously and manifested both 
alert intelligence and a spirit of fairness. During 
that long night ride Bob had thought out most 
carefully his exact line of appeal. 

“Your Excellency,” he said, earnestly, “wishes, 
of course, for the fullest development of the Imperial 
Valley in Mexico. To that end the ranchers must 
know they have full protection, not alone for their 
lives as they now have, but also for their crops. They 
must know it is profitable to farm in Mexico. I, 
myself, have five thousand acres of cotton, which 
will pay in export duties alone perhaps $25,000. 
Next year I wish to grow much more. Besides, I’m 
the agent for a very rich man who lends hundreds of 
thousands of dollars to other ranchers in your prov- 
ince. 


208 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


209 


“But this can continue only if those who do 
business on your side of the line obey the laws and 
pay their debts. Such men as Reedy Jenkins must 
be compelled to deal honestly or get out.” 

The governor agreed to what Rogeen said, and 
promised to take prompt action. 

“But,” insisted Bob, “to save us, it must be done 
quickly. Jenkins’ cotton must be seized and held 
for his debts, and the water turned into the canals at 
once.” 

This was also promised as soon as legal papers 
could be prepared. In leaving the office Bob dropped 
the telegram from the consul, accidentally. 

“It apparently will not be needed,” he said to 
himself as he left the office, “but it won’t hurt to lose 
it.” 

The telegram left in the office read : 

Present your situation to the governor, and if immediate relief 
is not given I’ll close the border within twenty-four hours so 
tight that not a man, a mule, nor a machine can cross it either way. 

Lanier, Consul. 

Two hours later a secretary who spoke good 
English and a Mexican captain appeared at the 
Chinese hotel where Bob was waiting. 


£10 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“We have here,” the secretary presented Bob with 
two papers, “an attachment for Senor Jenkins’ 
cotton and an order that the water must be turned 
into the canals at once, and at the old rate. El 
Capitan and I will accompany you in the governor’s 
own machine to see these orders are obeyed.” 

Rogeen requested that no message be sent to 
Mexicali regarding these attachments, as that would 
give Reedy a chance to dodge. 

“ Can we go back over the Mexican road, and come 
into the valley round the Laguna Salada?” Bob 
asked. Reedy might already be rushing his cotton 
on those trucks down to the waiting boat on the Gulf, 
and by going this route they would intercept them. 

The road over the mountains was not completed, 
said the secretary, but they could have another ma- 
chine from the valley to meet them, and in that 
machine make the circuit as proposed. 

At ten o’clock that night Rogeen, the captain, 
and the secretary left the machine and the chauffeur 
at the top of the mountain grade, and began the 
two-mile descent to the ancient bed of the sea — the 
desert round the Laguna Salada. 

Bob’s satisfaction at winning the governor was 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


211 


more than overbalanced by the torturing fear that 
it would all be too late. He believed they would be in 
time to stop Reedy from getting away with his four 
hundred thousand dollars’ worth of cotton. Jenkins 
would not start until he had lost hope of getting that 
$150,000 from the ranchers for water. But Bob 
feared he was already too late to save his own cotton 
and Chandler’s. 

The point on the mountain where they left the 
machine was almost a mile high. The descent to the 
valley was by a steep and precarious trail. The 
captain who was familiar with it took the lead. 

It was twelve-thirty when they reached the road 
at the bottom which led to Mexicali. The machine 
was not there. 

“What do you suppose is the matter?” Bob’s 
voice sounded surprisingly cool but a little flat, even 
to himself. Although the hot winds struck them 
here, his skin felt clammily cold. 

“He’ll be here by and by.” The secretary lighted 
a cigarette. He did not share Bob’s anxiety and 
felt no undue fret over a little delay. “I telegraphed 
the comandante to send driver and car here about 
midnight. He’ll be here before long,” he reassured. 


212 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


For an hour Bob walked back and forth peering 
at every turn far into the desert, listening until his 
ears ached. But no sight of car, no sound of puffing 
engine. Another hour passed, and another. His 
anxiety increased until the delay seemed unbearable. 

They waited nine hours. At last they saw the 
black bug of a machine crawling snortingly across 
the twenty-mile strip of sand between them and the 
pass through the Cocopa Mountains. 

At nine-thirty the car arrived, a powerful machine 
of expensive make. The chauffeur was a slender, 
yellowish young Mexican who delighted in taking 
dangerous curves at fifty miles an hour and who 
savagely thrilled at the terrific punishment his car 
could take and still go. 

Through the secretary Bob told him of the plan 
to skirt the Laguna Salada and go south round the 
Cocopas instead of going through the pass. This 
way they would follow the ancient bed of the Gulf 
of California and forty miles south turn across the 
desert of the Lower Colorado, thence northeastward 
until they struck the trail along the river. By this 
route they could reach the Red Butte, the head of the 
Dillenbeck canal, almost as quickly as through the 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


213 


pass and by Mexicali, while at the same time they 
would follow for thirty miles up the river trail down 
which Jenkins’ trucks must pass on the way to the 
head of the Gulf. 

“Do you think we can do it?” Bob asked the 
chauffeur. 

The chap lighted a cigarette, shrugged, and replied 
they could do any damn thing. 

“Let’s be doing it then,” urged Bob, jumping 
into the luxurious car. 

The Laguna Salada is a dead lake made from the 
overflow of the Colorado River and salted by the 
ancient bed of the sea. There is no vegetation 
round it, no life upon it. Along the salty, sandy 
shore that glitters in the sun there is no road, no 
broken trail. But the reckless chauffeur hit the 
sand with the exultant fierceness of a bull fighter. 
And at every lunge Bob clung to the iron bar over- 
head and devoutly prayed that the machine would 
live through it. 

It did. At one o’clock they swung round the head- 
lands into the main desert — the worst of its size on 
the continent, the desert of the Lower Colorado. 

As far as the eye could see stretched the dead 


214 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


waste, so dead that not a mesquite bush, not a 
cactus, not a living thing grew or crawled or flew. 
And upon it smote the sun so hot it seemed a flame, 
and over it boiled a wind like the breath of a 
volcano. 

It staggered even the four men, used as they were 
to the heat of the valley. But it was only forty 
miles to the river. 

“Pretty damn bad,” the chauffeur muttered in 
Spanish, and shrugged. Then he turned the nose of 
his machine northeast, and straight across the hard- 
packed sand shot into the blistering desert. 

“Two miles, four miles, six ” Bob counted 

off, watching the speedometer. Every mile took 
him nearer the road, the water gates — and Reedy 
Jenkins. 

“Eight — nine ” he continued. Then a ter- 
rific roar; the machine staggered; the chauffeur 
swore and applied the brakes. 

They all jumped out. It was the right hind tire — 
a hole blown through it ten inches long. The chauf- 
feur kicked it two or three times, lighted a cigarette, 
and stood looking at the burst tire. Finally he 
shrugged and glanced across the desert. The wind 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


21 5 


was blowing hard; there was sand in it. He shrug- 
ged and sauntered round to the front of the car, 
got out his jack and wrenches, took the wheel off, 
prowled round a quarter of an hour, then lighted 
another cigarette, again stood looking at the burst 
tire, and kicked it a few times as though trying to 
make it wake up and mend itself. 

“What is the matter?” asked Bob. He had been 
afraid to ask. 

“He says,” interpreted the secretary, “he has no 
inner tube. Forgot to bring any.” 

“Then he’ll have to run on the rim,” said Bob, 
desperately; “we’ve got to get out of this.” 

But the secretary nodded toward the radiator 
which roared as though about to blow up. 

“Where is his water?” Rogeen felt more than the 
heat surging through his head. 

The chauffeur sauntered round the car twice as 
though looking for it. 

“Says,” explained the secretary, “he had a can 
but must have lost it.” 

They tried running on the rim, without water and 
with the hot wind blowing the same direction they 
were going. The machine lasted four miles, and 


216 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


then quit in the middle of a sand drift, with the most 
infernal finality in its death surge. 

Bob got out and looked at the stalled car hope- 
lessly. The boiling wind surged over the hot dust 
and smote him witheringly. The driven sand al- 
most suffocated him. It was twenty-five miles at 
least to the river, twenty more to possible assistance. 
He looked at his watch — it was five minutes after 
one. Six hours before the sun would set, and until 
then walking would be suicide. 

He climbed back into the machine, and sank 
limply into the shaded corner of the seat. Six hours 
of this — it would be torture; and there would be one 
long night of walking to reach water; another day 
of waiting for night — without food — and again a 
long, staggering walk before they reached a human 
habitation. 

Two days and nights of delay — then it would be 
too late! 


CHAPTER XXIX 


HERE are times when torture of the body 



heals the suffering of the mind, and times 


-M*. when mental agony blots out physical pain. 
But there are other times when the two run together. 
It was so with Bob as they toiled doggedly through 
that long night across the desert toward the river. 
He kept his course by the North Star, and lost little 
distance by getting off the compass. It was just 
daylight when they reached the river. The stream 
was bank full — midsummer is high water for the 
Colorado — and was very muddy. But its water was 
more beautiful than jasper seas to those four men. 

After they had drunk and cooled themselves in it, 
they crawled under a clump of willows beside the 
road to rest through the day. Bob had just stretched 
out on his back and covered his face with a handker- 
chief, ready to sleep, when a chuck-chuck and a grind- 
ing noise came down the road. He was up instantly, 
and so were the three Mexicans. 


217 


218 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“A machine!” they exclaimed. Relief! They 
would not have to walk that other twenty miles. 

The deep chug of the engine indicated a powerful 
machine pulling heavily. It was coming rather 
slowly. The road was hidden by miles of rank 
wild hemp; but directly the machine came round a 
curve. 

It was a motor truck loaded high with cotton bales! 

Bob’s heart beat quick. They were in time to 
save at least part of it, after all. 

The captain bristled. Here was work to do, 
authority to display. He stepped into the middle 
of the road, put his hand on his gun, and gave a ring- 
ing call to halt. 

The Mexican driver came to a sudden stop. He 
knew el capitan. And whatever faults may be at- 
tributed to the governor of Baja California, all admits 
he is a governor. When he speaks in person or by 
messenger there is never any hesitancy about obedi- 
ence. 

The captain read his orders to the chauffeur and 
commanded him to turn round. The four climbed 
on, and the truck started back. 

The driver told them that only two trucks had 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


219 


gone on ahead; sixteen were behind, with Senor 
Jenkins on the last, and each truck carried twenty 
bales of cotton. 

They stopped the next truck when they met it, and 
then waited until all seventeen were backed up the road. 

Reedy Jenkins leaped from the rear one, nervous 
and violent of temper, swore, and hurried forward to 
see what was the trouble. To his unutterable wrath 
he saw the end truck headed about. 

“What the hell! you damned greasers.” But then 
he quit. Something was wrong here. He strode 
forward angrily. 

“Rogeen, get off that truck and do it damn quick.” 

“I’m getting off,” said Bob. With a quick leap 
he landed in the road and went straight for Reedy. 
The secretary and the captain followed. 

“I have a writ of attachment here,” said Bob, 
bringing out the paper issued by the governor, “for 
your cotton in favour of Ah Sing. I have further 
orders from the governor to deliver the cotton to the 
compress on the American side and sell it in the open 
market. 

“Captain,” Bob turned to the officer, “order 
the drivers to turn back. You ride on the front one 


220 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


with the driver, and I’ll ride on the back one with my 
kind friend Senor Jenkins.” 

That night after Bob Rogeen had left her with 
the telegram Imogene Chandler was too wrought 
up to sleep. And the longer she thought of it, the 
more determined she became to take action herself. 
She had some faith that the telegram would bring 
results, but not much faith that those results would 
come in time to save their crop. While Bob was 
riding through the days and nights, fighting for them, 
she and the other ranchers were doing nothing but 
watch their cotton burn for water. 

About eleven o’clock Imogene went to the corral 
and bridled and saddled a horse. With the bridle 
reins in her left hand and her revolver in her right, 
she galloped off north toward Rogeen ’s ranch to 
consult Noah Ezekiel. 

A mile up the road she met Noah riding south. 

“What’s the matter? Your dad not sick?” He 
was much astonished to see her riding out at this 
time of night. 

“No,” replied the girl, “it is our cotton that is 
sick. And I’m going after a doctor. Noah, I want 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 




you to go with me and show me where those water 
gates are. I’m going to have water or fight. They 
wouldn’t shoot a woman.” 

“Oh, wouldn’t they?” said Noah. “That shows 
how naturally scarce of information you are. 

“No,” said the hill billy determinedly but with a 
current of tenderness in his tone, “you ain’t goin’ 
to the water gates; you are goin’ back to your ranch. 
You are just naturally sweet enough to gentle a 
horse, but you ain’t cut out to fight Mexicans.” 

She had turned her horse round and was riding 
beside him back toward her ranch. 

“Now, listen here,” said Noah as he saw signs of re- 
bellion in the swing of her body and the grip on her 
revolver, “you go home and get your dad and your 
Chinaman ready. There’s goin’ to be water in them 
ditches before daylight or there will be one less hill 
billy in this vale of tears.” 

During these fervid days Noah Ezekiel had not 
been asleep, although much of the time he looked 
as though he were on the verge of it. He had had 
his eye on both ranches — the Chandlers’ and the 
Red Butte. Twice he had cautiously reconnoitred 
the full length of the water ditches. 


222 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


At a point on the Valley Irrigation Company’s 
big canal, about seven miles below the intake from 
the Colorado River, two diverting ditches branched 
off; the larger of these furnished the main water 
supply of the Mexican side of the valley, the smaller 
was the Dillenbeck system. 

At these gates the Valley Company kept water 
keepers and guards day and night. As the Dillen- 
beck Company were merely private consumers, water 
was turned into this canal only on their orders, and 
charged for by the thousand feet. 

Four miles below where this canal began to branch 
to the various ranches it supplied was the Dillenbeck 
water station. It was the keeper in charge here who 
ordered water from the main canal and who opened 
the sluice gates and apportioned it to the various 
ranches. 

Noah Ezekiel on his reconnoitring discovered two 
things: The night water keeper had been reen- 
forced by a Mexican guard; and besides Madrigal, 
the Mexican Jew, usually spent the night with these 
two. Expecting trouble, a company of twenty 
Mexican special guards was camped a quarter of a 
mile down the canal, in easy calling distance. These 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


223 


guards, while authorized by the comandante, were 
hired and paid by Reedy Jenkins. It was their duty 
to patrol the canal above and below by the main 
water gates and be ready at all times to repulse any 
threatened attack. 

Noah Ezekiel had been approached several times 
by infuriated ranchers with suggestions that they 
organize a mob. But American ranchers were too 
few and unpopular to make mobs highly hopeful. 
An attack on these guards would bring on a conflict 
with the whole Mexican garrison at Mexicali, con- 
sisting of several hundred well-trained troops. Noah 
Ezekiel advised strongly against this. Noah was 
opposed to strife of any kind. But he had been 
doing a little plotting of his own. 

He knew the Red Owl employed a number of 
boosters for the games — men who went from table 
to table and gambled with the house’s money. The 
psychology of gambling is like the psychology of 
anything else — the livelier the game the more there 
are who want to get into it. The job of the booster 
is to stimulate business by gambling freely himself. 
These boosters are paid four dollars a day; and the 
ordinary Mexican, if given his choice between being 


224 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


secretary of state and a booster at the Red Owl, 
would pick the Owl every time. 

After a reasonable wait to see if water was coming 
in by the due process of law and growing doubtful 
about it, Noah Ezekiel had begun carefully laying 
plans. 

That morning he had gone to the Red Owl and 
had a secret session with Jack the Ace of Diamonds, 
one of the game keepers. Jack and the hill billy 
had become good friends, and Jack was more than 
willing to accommodate a friend. 

“Now, Ace,” said Noah, “the idea is like this: 
This afternoon you send a Mexican out to that camp 
on the Dillenbeck canal with the information that 
the Owl wants to hire about eleven good boosters 
to begin work at twelve o’clock to-night; and have 
the messenger casually but secretly give each of them 
a slip of paper that is dead sure to get him one of the 
jobs. 

“And,” Noah grinned, “you give every one of 
’em that applies a job for two days — as a treat on 
me. You can fix it with the boss.” 

“Sure,” grinned Jack, “I’ll fix it.” And a Mexi- 
can messenger had been dispatched on the spot. 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 225 

Noah sat at the ranch shack as dark came on and 
counted them as they went by down the road. As 
he guessed, the officer would get away first, and the 
rest begin to drop away from camp one or two at a 
time soon after dark. By eleven o’clock he had 
counted seventeen ; and then Noah saddled his horse. 
When he had met Imogene, he had thought she was 
another Mexican, but he was not alarmed at one or 
even three. 

A little before one o’clock Noah tied his horse to 
a cottonwood tree a half mile below the Dillenbeck 
water gates. 

He skirted through the fields round the deserted 
guard camp. His caution was not necessary, not a 
Mexican soldier was left. He grinned to think of the 
boosters about now in the Red Owl. Two hundred 
yards from the little open shack that served as office 
and home for the water keeper Noah took off his 
shoes and left his hat, and slipped toward the light. 
In his hands, muzzle forward, was the double- 
barrelled shotgun — the riot gun sure to hit its mark 
at close range that Bob had got for him with which 
to guard the Chandler ranch. 


CHAPTER XXX 


OAH, bent low, slipped forward in utter 



silence — more silence than necessary. The 


American water keeper, Madrigal, and the 


Mexican guard were too profoundly busy with a crap 
game on the floor under the lantern to be disturbed 
by the mere breaking of a twig. 

But all at once from out the night came a drawling 
voice: 

“Brethren, let’s raise our hands.” Three pairs 
of eyes leaped up from the dice and looked into the 
muzzle of the most vicious shotgun they had ever 
seen — not ten feet away. Six hands went up without 
a word. 

“Stand up,” was the next drawling command. 
“Turn your backs.” Noah flung two small ropes 
at their feet. 

“You,” he ordered Madrigal, “tie the Mex’s 
hands behind him — and stand him over by the 


wall.” 


226 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 




“Whitey,” he ordered the water keeper when that 
was done, “tie the Hebrew’s hands and feet and set 
him down over by the wall, facing this way. 

“Now,” Noah again commanded the water keeper, 
“go to the telephone and order the water turned in. 
Tell ’em we are dry — that all the trouble is settled, 
and to shoot the water down banks full, right away, 
quick.” 

The water keeper was shaking as though with the 
ague. He knew danger when he saw it and he was 
perfectly sure he saw it. 

He went to the telephone and called the keeper 
at the Valley Irrigation Company’s office. As he 
started to speak Madrigal stirred on the floor as 
though trying to get up. 

Still keeping the water keeper covered with the 
shotgun, Noah looked round at Madrigal and 
drawled : 

“If I was you, Hebrew, I’d keep sayin’ over that 
parable which reads: ‘Once there was a Mexican 
who was shot in the stomach with half a pint of 
buckshot; and in hell he lifted up his eyes and said, 
“Father Abraham, send me a drop of water.” And 
Father Abraham says, “Not a drop. Ain’t you the 


228 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


man that helped burn up the Imperial Valley? 
Hell’s too good for you, but it’s all we’ve got.” ’ ” 

The telephone message was given. 

“It sounded all right,” said Noah to the water 
keeper. “Sit down over there and be comfortable, 
while we wait and see; and keep your eye on the 
muzzle of the gun. It is the only way to keep it 
from smokin’.” 

Forty minutes passed. Noah’s eyes were on his 
prisoners, but his ears kept listening. Fifty minutes, 
then he heard a loud woosh — almost a roar. The 
water was coming! 

“Now let’s go out and open up all gates,” ordered 
Noah. The water keeper obeyed. 

“For the time being,” drawled Noah, “you can 
lie down out there in the open beside the canal and 
take a nap. Shootin’ craps has been sort of hard on 
your nerves. I’ll look after the water for a spell.” 

About nine o’clock at night Imogene Chandler 
came in from the cotton field. 

Out there in the dim starlight stretched the long 
rows of cotton, erect, green, luxuriant. The water 
had come in time. It had flowed into their ditches 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


229 


at four o’clock the morning after Noah Ezekiel 
passed. They had been ready for it. For three 
days it had flowed abundantly, and all their fields 
were watered. 

Imogene lifted her face to the wind. She loved the 
desert again. And yet there was restlessness in her 
movements; even in the stillness her ears strained to 
catch some other sound than the soft rustle of the wind. 

Nothing had happened to him of course or she 
would have heard. But she had watched for him 
that first night after the water was turned in; the 
next night she was expecting him, and last night she 
felt sure he would come. If he did not come to- 
night Maybe something had happened, maybe he 

had been shot by some of Jenkins’ hired assassins? 
Fear, which really had been hovering about for three 
days, but put off by her faith in Bob’s utter com- 
petence to take care of himself, swooped down on her 
suddenly. Her throat grew dry, her heart beat like a 
frightened bird’s, she whirled and started to run for 
the house. She would start in search at once. 

Then came the sound that her ears had been 
straining for — the chuck, chuck of his little machine. 

She dropped down on the bench under the arrow- 


230 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


wood shelter and let herself go. But the sobs were 
over, her eyes dry, her lips smiling, as he came across 
the yard in the dusk with a dark bulk under his 
arms. 

He had brought his fiddle. She did not stir from 
the bench. She felt utterly, blissfully relaxed. Her 
arm lay loosely along the back of the bench, her head 
dropped slightly forward, the wind still stirring her 
hair. 

“Hello.” That was her only greeting. But the 
tone of it went through him like a soft breath of 
wind in the woods following a lull in the storm. 

“Hello,” and that was his only reply as he sat down 
on the bench beside her, the fiddle across his knees. 

Her arm lying lazily along the back of the bench 
was almost touching him; but he had not noticed it, 
and she left it there. 

“I don’t hardly know where to begin,” Bob said 
directly, and laughed to try to cover up his emotions. 
He knew that no matter where he began he never 
could put in words the horror of the night when the 
ghost of utter defeat and failure walked with him 
over that terrible desert; nor yet the great upsweep of 
triumph that engulfed him when he reached the water 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 231 

gates the next day and learned that Noah Ezekiel 
and a double-barrelled shotgun had saved the crops 
three days before — his and all the rest. 

To feel one moment that he was in debt for life, 
beaten and wrecked, and the next to know he would 
be worth in three months at least a hundred thou- 
sand dollars! No, he could not put that in words; so 
he merely twanged softly the violin strings with his 
thumb, and remarked casually: 

“Well, I got the money.” 

“What money?” Still the girl did not stir. She 
was so blissfully lethargic, and she was not thinking 
at all of money or cotton. 

“For poor old Ah Sing, and for Jim Crill. I 
seized Reedy’s cotton this morning and sold it this 
afternoon. Got $410,000 for the cotton and the seed. 
But Jenkins was in deeper than we knew. He’s 
gambled away fifty thousand or so. After I’d paid 
up all his debts, including the duty, there was only 
$25,000 left for Reedy. And Mrs. Barnett came 
down on me like a squawking hen, demanding that. 
Said Reedy had promised it to her for gettingthe 
loans from her uncle. But Reedy denied it.” 

“What did you do?” asked Imogene as he paused. 


232 


THE DESERT FIDDLER 


“I compromised — told Reedy I was entitled to 
that much for commission and damages, but that I’d 
give it to him provided he and Mrs. Barnett married. 
They did.” 

Imogene laughed, a rich warm laugh in which there 
was no sting of revenge, only humour for human faults. 
This was such a good world, and such a beautiful desert ! 

Bob did not think of anything more to tell of his 
exploits. Somehow his mind would not stay on 
them. Instead, he looked up at the stars and sighed 
with deep content, then put the fiddle to his shoulder 
and raised the bow. 

When he finished he turned to look down at her, 
and in that moment felt the touch of her arm at his 
back. She was very still; he was not sure whether 
she was crying or smiling. 

“Do you know what it said?” he asked, huskily. 

“ Y-e-s,” she answered, softly, “but I want to hear 
it in words, too.” 

He slipped his arm round her and drew her to him. 
“You wonderful darling,” he said, kissing her, 
“you’ll hear it a million times in words.” 


THE END 


THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 



I 














































































•l 


















■ 




















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































. 

























































































































































































































' 





















































































LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


